Shofar FTP Archive File: miscellany/holocaus/log9307

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Date: Wed, 17 Nov 1993 13:33:02 -0600
From: BITNET list server at UICVM (1.7f)
Subject: File: "HOLOCAUS LOG9307"
To: Ken McVay
Status: O
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 1 Jul 1993 09:30:51 PDT
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: Bob Pasker
Subject: info on ABSTRACTED e-INDEX to JEWISH PERIODICALS.
Recent efforts have been made to organize and maintain an
ABSTRACTED e-INDEX to JEWISH PERIODICALS.
A list of potential journals to be reviewed has been compiled
and now you have the opportunity to vote on which journals
you would like to see reviewed.
To receive a ballot send a post requesting a ballot to
AJHYMAN@oise.on.ca or AJHYMAN@utoroise.bitnet
instructions will be included.
FURTHER, a synopsis of discussions on this new service will
be featured in a special edition of JewStudies to be posted in
July. To subscribe to "JewStudies - An e-Journal of Jewish Studies"
(no cost), please send the message
SUBSCRIBE JEWSTUDIES
to LISTSERV@Israel.nysernet.org
--
AJ Hyman
AJHYMAN@oise.on.ca
AJHYMAN@utoroise.bitnet
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 6 Jul 1993 16:57:30 -0500
Reply-To: Jim Mott
Sender: Holocaust List
From: Jim Mott
Subject: Brundibar
As advised, we suspended membership of the network temporarily while we
were on vacation. The purpose of this message is twofold. (1) to advise
anyone who might have been trying to contact Rita about Brundibar
unsuccessfully over the past two weeks, and (2) as a test - since
re-connecting four days ago, we have not received a single message.
So, "hello again" -- we hope!
John and Rita McLeod
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 7 Jul 1993 09:00:11 -0500
Reply-To: Jim Mott
Sender: Holocaust List
From: Jim Mott
Subject: Brundibar
Sender: Holocaust List
From: Jim Mott
Subject: JewishNet Server
>>>>>>>> [3] Databases in Israel (GcG TeX).
[4] Databases out of Israel.
[5] Bulletin boards.
[6] Inside university information.
[7] Information for the student.
[8] Municipal information.
[9] News groups.
[10] Recreation.
[11] Environmental info. system.
[12] Search info. system menus.
** DATABASES IN ISRAEL.
[1] GcG news and info (E).
[2] TeX news and info (E).
[3] Israel environmental info (H/E).
[4] Israel Elec. network info (E).
[5] Psycgrad Digest database (E).
[6] Gophers in Israel (H/E).
and then choose >>>> [7] Global Jewish Networking (E).
[8] Jewish databases.
and you will receive the following menu:
JewishNet - Global Jewish Networking
*
MAIN MENU
The JewishNet Server [1]
Jewish Libraries and Catalogs [2]
Reading Lists on Judaism [3]
Jewish Networking Projects [4]
Usenet Groups of Jewish Interest [5]
Description of Jewish Interest Listserv Conferences [6]
Frequently Asked Questions on Soc.Culture.Jewish [7]
Jewish Information in Cybersphere [8]
Dov Winer dovw@vms.huji.ac.il
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 8 Jul 1993 12:47:00 EST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: New acquisitions on history ftp site
[From: "Michael J. McCarthy"
[Subject: New acquisitions on history ftp site (please forward to your
lists)
WHAT'S NEW on
HISTORY FTP SITE
BYRD.MU.WVNET.EDU
129.71.32.152
pub/history
Managers:
Mike McCarthy, Marshall Univ. (YEA003@Marshall.WVNET.Edu)
Donna Spindel, Marshall Univ. (HST001@Marshall.WVNET.Edu)
Honorary Manager and Major Contributor:
Larry Jewell (jewell@mace.cc.purdue.edu)
UPDATE: 8 July 1993
We have obtained a large number of new files on byrd.mu.wvnet.edu
since the last update two months ago. Below is a detailed listing,
by subdirectory. For a comprehensive listing of all current files on
the FTP site, send me a request through email or retrieve the file
INDEX from the pub/history subdirectory.
Mike McCarthy
History Dept.
Marshall University
MMCCARTH@MUVMS6.WVNET.EDU
======================ATTACHMENT======================================
*DIRECTORY OF pub/history/diplomatic/coldwar:
berlin_brief.txt JFK Briefing on Berlin Task Force
berlin_wall.txt Article on Berlin Wall, John Ausland
jfk_berlin.txt Article on JFK Briefing, John Ausland
us_fp_europe.txt Honor's thesis, "From the Marshall Plan to
the Treaty of Rome: US Foreign Policy and
European Integration" Richard P. Klau,
Lafayette College, April 1993
*DIRECTORY OF pub/history/diplomatic/h-diplo:
bio Subdir: Subscriber bios, H-DIPLO list
*DIRECTORY OF pub/history/general:
timeline.txt A timeline of history
*DIRECTORY OF pub/history/internet:
army_war_coll.txt Guide to databases of Army War College
european.guide_2 Electronic sources for Western European history
and culture
hnserver.txt Announcement of history gopher server
hypertext_sim Subdir: Hypertext simulation of CICNet Electronic
journal archives
ipwin.txt InfoPop Windows: hypertext guide to Internet
ipwin.zip BINARY: InfoPop Windows: hypertext guide to Internet
nettools.memo EARN Guide to Network Resource Tools
whatis.internet Description of internet and its uses
*DIRECTORY OF pub/history/maritime:
american_bat_dir Subdir: Files from American Battleship Directory
american_naval_dic Subdir: Files from Dictional of American Naval Ships
german_hclass.txt Description of German H-Class Battleships
*DIRECTORY OF pub/history/military:
guerilla.txt Paper: Psych Operations in Guerilla Warfare,
Tayac n
gulf_war Subdir: Gulf War, 1991
*DIRECTORY OF pub/history/military/airforce:
luftaces.txt List of Luftwaffe ace fighter pilots
p_series_fighters Subdir: Descriptions of US P-series fighter planes
swedish_air.txt List of Swedish military aircraft types
usaf_descriptions Subdir: Descriptions of US Air Force planes
usaf_fact_sheets Subdir: Official US Air Force Fact Sheets
*DIRECTORY OF pub/history/military/airforce/wwii_chronology:
jun_43.txt USAAF Chronology, June 1943
*DIRECTORY OF pub/history/military/civil_war_usa:
us_mem_day.txt History of US Memorial Day Holiday
civ_war.bib_1 Civil War Bibliography (1)
civ_war.bib_2 Civil War Bibliography (2)
suggested.reading Suggested reading on Civil War
units_file.txt Civil War units file
*DIRECTORY OF pub/history/military/gulf_war:
navy.biblio Bibliography of US Navy in the Gulf War
*DIRECTORY OF pub/history/military/united_states:
medals Subdir: Commendations graphics files
*DIRECTORY OF pub/history/military/vietnam:
hanoi_hannah.txt Article: Voices from the Past, Don North
(_Vietnam Generation_, Vol. 3, No. 3)
nvet_archive Subdir: _NAMVET: International Newsletter for
Vietnam Veterans_ archive
vietnam_glos.txt Glossary of Vietnam War era terms
*DIRECTORY OF pub/history/military/wwii:
4307.txt Chronology of events, July 1943
balkans.txt Files re: German anti-guerilla operations in
the Balkans, 1941-44
d_day_letters.txt _INF: Letters Home: D-Day_, John Ausland
dragoon.txt Description of Operation Dragoon
japan_expand.txt Japanese expansion, 1931-41
japan_mil_prep.txt Japanese economic & military prep, 1931-41
national_arc.txt National Archives Center for Electronic Records
Holdings on WWII
wwii-l_digests Subdir: Digests of WWII-L@UBVM discussion list
*DIRECTORY OF pub/history/political/united_states/presidency:
fdr.inaug Text of Roosevelt's Inaugural Addresses
john_adams.inaug Text of John Adams's Inaugural Address
lincoln.gif BINARY: Graphic file of Lincoln
*DIRECTORY OF pub/history/science:
host Subdir: History of Science and Technology Journal
Archives
*DIRECTORY OF pub/history/utilities:
chrnos.txt Chronology determination software
chrnos.zip BINARY: Chronology determination software
inch_mm.txt Inches-millimeter conversion table
maya36.txt Mayan/modern calendar conversion software
maya36.zip BINARY: Mayan/modern calendar conversion software
nugu93.txt New User's Guide to Usenet, Windows 3.1
nugu93.zip BINARY: New User's Guide to Usenet, Windows 3.1
vn_teach_tools.txt Description of tools for teaching Vietnam
Geography (vnmyhome.zip & vnquetoi.zip)
vnmyhome.zip BINARY: Vietnam Geography (English version)
vnquetoi.zip BINARY: Vietnam Geography (Vietnamese version)
wtp.txt We The People, Windows 3.1
wtp.zip BINARY: We the People, Windows 3.1
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 8 Jul 1993 16:35:00 EST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: Brundibar
Several people have requested more information on a
recent append regarding Brundibar. Below are
a couple earlier messages from subscribers which
should help bring you up to date.
Jim Mott
Holocaus, moderator
================================
[Sender: Holocaust List
[From: Simon Wiesenthal Center Library/Archives
[Subject: Re: Brundibar
A second recording of Brundibar has recently become available on the
Romanitic Robot label as part of the two-CD set Terezin 1941-1945.
It is distributed in the US by Albany Music Group. With an all-Czech
ensemble I believe it to be a superior recording to the one on Channel.
I have found that the children's voices are difficult to understand
on the Channel recording (the orchestra seems far too loud).
The entire set is a superb survey of Terezin music - piano, chamber
music, vocal as well as the recording of Brundibar.
It is however a bit pricy - $40 for the set at Tower.
Paul H. Hamburg
Reference Librarian
Simon Wiesenthal Center
e-mail: simonwie@class.org
===================================================================,
[Sender: Holocaust List
[From: FISHMAN%SNYFARVA.BITNET@uga.cc.uga.edu
[Subject: Re: Brundibar
Mr. Hamburg,
Many thanks for information about the two-CD Terezin music set, inclusive
of the Brundibar.
Do you have either of the following in your archives and data files:
a. poems (in any language) about the Holocaust that would be suitable for my in-
progress anthology, _Flames Ascending: World Poets on the Holocaust_? I believe
you have at least one copy of my earlier work, _Blood to Remember: American
Poets on the Holocaust_. If you have appropriate material for the new work, I
can communicate with you by private post, fax, etc.
b. a list of Holocaust studies program and/or professors in this country and
Canada?
I will look forward to reading your reply.
--Cordially,
Charles Fishman
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 12 Jul 1993 15:16:00 EST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: Re: Weisenthal e-mail address
This originally appeared on the jem@nysernet.org list:
[From: H_Markowitz@att.att.com
[To: Multiple recipients of list
[Subject: Re: Weisenthal e-mail address
The Simon Wiesenthal Center can now be reached via Internet.
The address is SIMONWIE@CLASS.ORG
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 13 Jul 1993 09:26:00 EST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: Holocaust Museum = too negative/ fascist even??
[From: SMTP%"CAMPBELLD%APSU.BITNET@uicvm.uic.edu" "RICHARD JENSEN"
12-JUL-1993 17:33:29.40
[To: holocaus%uicvm.BITNET@uchimvs1.uchicago.edu
[Subj: Holocaust Museum = too negative/ fascit even??
>From: Paul G Kosidowski
>Subject: Trauma and Holocaust
Kali Tal writes:
> degrees in American Studies with a concentration in African American
> Studies and, particularly, the effect of particular traumatic
> experiences on different U.S. populations. My recent work has
> culminated in a book (_The Language of Pain: Reading the Literature of
> Trauma_, Cambridge U Press, forthcoming in their U.S. Literature and
> Culture series) dealing with literature by Holocaust survivors, Viet
> Nam combat veterans, and rape and incest survivors. I am interested
> in why people are moved to "bear witness" and how their testimony is
> interpreted, appropriated and revised in public/popular culture.
With this background I'd be interested in your thoughts on the new Holocaust
museum, which seems to use the holocaust as evidence of the supreme value
of American ideology. In last month's Harper's there is an account that
describes the museum as an antidote--an injection of fascism into the
American psyche that will bolster our psychic resources against fascist
tendencies. The mere fact of its existence seems to circumscribe
the Jewish experience/identity in wholly negative terms (imagine an
American "slavery" museum as opposed to an African-American museum). I'd
be interested in your or anyone's thoughts.
--
Paul Kosidowski English--Modern Studies
pkosidow@csd4.csd.uwm.edu U of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
PO Box 413
Milwaukee, WI 53211
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 13 Jul 1993 13:49:00 EST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: Holocaust Museum = too negative
[To: HOLOCAUS%UICVM.BITNET@uga.cc.uga.edu
[From: "Kenneth.Waltzer" <21409MGR%msu.edu@uicvm.uic.edu>
[Subject: Holocaust Museum = too negative/
[In-Reply-To: The letter of Tuesday, 13 July 1993 10:28am ET
The question about the focus and impact of the new Holocaust museum in
Washington is a good one, which I hope will stir a substantial open dialogue
on this network -- with many participants. I just returned from a visit to
the Holocaust museum and offer these preliminary thoughts.
Overall, the museum is a remarkable, thoughtfully done effort -- the building
is terrific, the exhibits are meticulously done, reflecting the best current
scholarship, the use of video and photo displays, selective use of artifacts,
and display of textual explanatary materials are excellent. The Holocaust is
conceptualized within the specific history of Jews and anti-Semitism, there is
clear emphasis on the intentionality of the Holocaust but also clear emphasis
on the evolution of Nazi policy from forced migration in the 30s to mass
extermination after spring 1941, and there is attention to Roma (gypsies),
the hereditary ill, homosexuals, political opponents, and Soviet prisoners as
victims as well while stressing that Jews were the singled-out vicitms.
There is a curious lacuna in treatment of the United States and the
Holocaust. There is clear, unflinching criticism of American immigration
policy and administrative response 1933-1940, the refusal to revise or
liberally administer U.S. policy and provide safe haven. The early parts of
the exhibit serve as a continuing reminder in the heart of Washington D.C. on
behalf of liberal immigration policy. There is also clear, unflinching
criticism of American policy in refusing to bomb Auschwitz late in the war,
when U.S. bombers from Italy were already flying in the vicinity -- something,
like Henry Feingold, I find to be more problematic than David Wyman has
argued.But there is quite limited attention, surprisingly, to the American
response (non-response) during 1942-43, when information became available from
several sources to the Roosevelt Administration, was confirmed, and pressures
mounted on the Administration to develop a rescue policy. The exhibit states
here and there that the State Dept obstructed the flow of information and
nothing was done until Treasury pushed the Administration to act in creating
the War Refugee Board; but this is done in the context of hailing the work of
the WRB in saving lives. There is no parallel criticial look at American
policy 1942-44 in the same way as look at American policy 1933-40. Somewhere,
somehow, someone -- interestingly -- pulled one's punches.
The museum is especially sensitive in incorporating the survivors' voices
and perspectives in the exhibit, culminating in survivor voices about
Auschwitz and survivor videos (all Americans, I surmise) at the close of the
exhibit. There is truth in the claim that the museum reminds people of the
dangers of Nazism and racial hate and affirms (American) liberal democratic
values -- including critiquing American policy from that angle. Even more, the
museum affirms humane values, celebrating where possible the special acts of
courage and human solidarity of rescuers, resisters, and providers of havens
in hiding.
I don't think that the mere fact of its existence circumscribes the
Jewish experience/identity in wholly negative terms, though its existence does
point to the absorption of the Holocaust into American Jewish identity as one
formative or central element, as Michael Berenbaum has written. The museum is
a museum about the Holocaust, not about the American Jewish experience; and it
focuses our attention on European Jewish life and communities, including the
one at Eishishook, in Lithuania, whose people stare out at us from hundreds of
photographs, and on European Jews marked for death and destruction and rounded
up for deportation, and on European history in the mid-20th century. One
can't but help wonder whether an American Jewish history museum in Washington
D.C. would stand in point/counterpoint to the Holocaust museum in some sort of
New World/Old World relation -- like much of American culture itself. What in
Europe was made marginal by the Holocaust -- migration, modernization,
absorption, contribution -- would be central in the Am. Jewish history museum;
what in Europe was made central by the Holocaust -- anti-Semitism, separation,
exclusion, and worse -- would be marginal.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 13 Jul 1993 14:13:00 EST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: Re: Holocaust Museum = too negative/ fascist even??
[From: "R. B. Schmerl"
[To: Holocaust List
[Subject: Re: Holocaust Museum = too negative/ fascist even??
Mr. Kosidowski's notion that "the mere fact of [the Holocaust museum's]
existence seems to circumscribe the Jewish experience/identity in wholly
negative terms (imagine an American 'slavery' museum as opposed to an
African-American museum)" strikes me as very strange. The United States
is now the home of the world's single largest population of Jews. The
Holocaust, in which over a third of the world's 1933 Jews lost their
lives, was surely the most significant event of modern Jewish history.
It seems appropriate for the world's largest Jewish population, enjoying
freedoms never rivaled before in the entire Diaspora, to commemorate
that event, to want a permanent memorial to those for whom the ultimate
disrespect would be obliteration of their fate before its echoes have
stopped reverberating. There is certainly room for disagreement about
the choice of the Holocaust Museum's location, i.e., whether it should have
been built on public land, but that its purpose should be interpreted as
"wholly negative" is surprising. Is Yom Kippur, the anniversary of more
than one tragedy in Jewish history, also a "wholly nergative" circum-
scription of Jewish experience/identity?
As for American "slavery" museums, there are such collections, as there
are in Africa, for purposes quite indistinguishable from those of the
Holocaust Museum. The collections include bills of sale, advertisements
for "run-aways," chains, drawings, announcements of auctions, etc. That the
Black experience of slavery was negative is too obvious for comment, but
it does not follow that the identity forged in that experience was negative
nor that such documents and paraphernalia as survive lack interest and
significance for us today. Out of our slavery in Egypt came our religion;
out of our slavery in Babylon, the Babylonian Talmud; out of the Holocaust,
Israel (whose significance and ultimate value remains to be seen for all
its citizens and neighbors, admittedly); and out of the horrors of the
slavery of Black people in the Western hemisphere, a new and remarkable
people whose cultural contributions, vigor, and moral energy--precisely
because they affirm the significance of the suffering of their forebears--
are transforming much of the world. It is too soon to forget what Black
people have suffered and accomplished, and it is too soon to forget what
Jews suffered and survived.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 14 Jul 1993 09:37:00 EST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: Re: Holocaust Museum = too negative/ fascist even??
[Date: Tue, 13 Jul 1993 17:22:28 -0400 (EDT)
[From: Cecelia A Clancy
[Subject: Re: Holocaust Museum = too negative/ fascist even??
[To: Holocaust List
>
> >From: Paul G Kosidowski
> >Subject: Trauma and Holocaust
>
> Kali Tal writes:
> > [...] the effect of particular traumatic
> > experiences on different U.S. populations.
If anybody is to have a true understanding of Holocaust Denial,
then one MUST have a good understanding on how the news of the
Holocaust has traumatized the German population in America.
Trouble, is, nobody out there among "the experts" even knows
that this particular population is even traumatized to begin
with, and therefore "the experts" out there then go on to badly
misinterpret certain things in relation to the trend of Holocaust
Denial. And then when these same "experts" get together and
decide on how "we will combat Holocaust Denial", they all too
often do things that are not only ineffective, but counterproductive.
Even worse still, their lack of understanding of what has been
going on with in the U.S. German population since the 1940's
causes them to fail to properly evaluate the effects of the
actions thy take - often at great time and great monatary
expense - in their efforts to "fight Revisionism", and hence
leading them to believe that their actions "fought Revisionism"
when they really fed it. For example, a lot of people among
"the experts" seem to be thinking that the new Holocaust
Museum will "fix Revisionism", they are wrong. It is only
aggravating some of the unresolved traumas of German America. And
since "the experts" on the Holocaust Memorial Council are not even
AWARE of the trauma, let alone know anything of its extend and nature,
were powerless to do the many things that it could have done fairly
easily to avoid aggravating that trauma. Even more tragically,
there are things the Council could have been doing since 1980 to
positively counteract that trauma that it did not even know about.
Because of these aggravations, many of which could have been
unavoidable, many checks are now being written in German America
and being mailed to IHR (Institute for Historical Review, which is
"headquartered" near Los Angeles). IHR is also being remembered
in many a GA will, for many people in German America mistakenly
think that IHR is a benevolent and non-bigoted organization
and that IHR is the only entity that can and will provide the
much-needed shelter that "the experts" out there do not even know
that we so much need.
But Willis Carto has known our needs for years and has been
"meeting" them in ways that are detrimental to German America,
to Jewish America, to much of America as a whole, and benefical
only to his "other agenda" that he does not tell his target
audiences in German America about. It is an "other agenda" of
bigotry and prejudice of the worst sort. His professional
bigotry (all done behind the scenes) reaches not only through all
or most of the United States, but across the Atlantic Ocean as
well. If you think that Willis Carto "is just that little
flunky who has something to do with Liberty Lobby and IHR", you
are wrong. Even though Carto has both LL and IHR set up to
make it appear that he plays a minor role in both, in reality,
he plays a major role in LL and is the sole dictator of IHR.
Carto is far more influential and far more successful than David
Duke and worse, a large percentage of his "successes" are not even
aware of what REALLY Carto is. I went an entire decade without
knowing and I am not stupid. It is just that Carto is so clever.
NEVER underestimate him.
I see the notion that the new Museum will "fix Revisionism" expressed
so often in recent weeks that I am even wondering if "doing something
to stop Revisionism" might have been a major motivation of at least
some of the people who had worked to get the Museum established.
The "drive" to establish it, interestingly enough, began just about
a year after IHR was founded by Willis Carto and right when IHR was in
local Los Angeles news and in the eye of the main Jewish organizations
nationally and internationally as a result of the matter of the
$50,000 prize and the related lawsuits brought by Mel Mermelstein.
> > My recent work has
> > culminated in a book (_The Language of Pain: Reading the Literature of
> > Trauma_, Cambridge U Press, forthcoming in their U.S. Literature and
> > Culture series) dealing with literature by Holocaust survivors, Viet
> > Nam combat veterans, and rape and incest survivors.
And for how long have the Holocaust survivors, the Vietnam vets, the
rape and incest survivors been misunderstood for years - only to
have "the experts" deny the value of what they have to say and to even
go so far as to do them even further harm by denying the validity of
what they try (often ineffectively) to say and of misinterpreting,
of misdiagnosing, and of mistreating them. For one of "the experts"
denying the value of what the Holocaust survivors have to say,
see what Reitlinger wrote in the Introduction to an edition of
his work, _The Final Solution_ that was published in the early
1950's. I believe this was the first edition, but I am not certain.
For extensive treatment on how "the experts" have harmed Vietnam
Vets, see _Another Silenced Trauma_ and for harm done to rape and
incest survivors, see _Victims No Longer_.
And I am certain most readers of this List can, in 1993, understand
why it took so long for the Holocaust survivors, the Vietnam Vets,
and the rape and incest survivors to come forth and be understood.
(Although I must caution that there are still today many of
all of these three broad categories of survivors still trapped
and still not at all understood!!!) Well, it is for these
very same kinds of reasons that I was not there in 1981 telling
the new Holocaust Memorial Commission all about how not to
inadvertantly aggravate the trauma of the Holocaust upon German
America.
"Coming forth" is an extraordinarlly difficult thing - even after
a person is ready to come forth. There is a woman with the
Survivors' organization here in Pittsburgh (for Holocaust
survivors) who goes to schools and colleges to give presentation
on her experiences during the Holocaust (and after). Despite the
fact that she has been giving these presentations for years, she told
me a year ago that she does not get any sleep the night before she
gives a presentation and does not get any sleep the night after she
gives one.
I am sorry that I do not know the exact citations of the works I
have mentioned. I will look them up. This post taps so
powerfully into something very important to me that I felt compelled
to give it some kind of immediate response - even if I could not yet
supply complete references.
> > I am interested
> > in why people are moved to "bear witness" and how their testimony is
> > interpreted, appropriated and revised in public/popular culture.
I too am now being moved to bear witness. Anybody who knows
how to log onto a newsreader go read the witness that I have been
trying to bear witness in the USENET newsgroup of alt.revisionism
and read of how my testimony is being interpreted, appropriated
and revised in the public/popular culture of USENET. That is
not complete, of course, because there are also some things going
on in private e-mail that I do not feel free to duplicate in the
public forum of USENET's alt.revisionism newsgroup.
I would be very much interested in talking to Kali Tal, but I do
not see her or his e-mail address reproduced here.
> With this background I'd be interested in your thoughts on the i
> new Holocaust museum,
I too, have many thoughts on the new Holocaust Museum. But I
cannot state them in this message.
> I'd
> be interested in your or anyone's thoughts.
To include mine, I assume, Paul. I would like to share my
thoughts, but today is not the time.
> --
> Paul Kosidowski English--Modern Studies
> pkosidow@csd4.csd.uwm.edu U of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
> PO Box 413
> Milwaukee, WI 53211
********************************************************************
Cecelia Mu"llermeder P.O. Box 71222
muller+@pitt.edu Pittsburgh, PA 15213
(412) 441-7980 USA
*********************************************************************
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 14 Jul 1993 11:30:00 EST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: H-Net Guide to LOCIS = Library of Congress
A. H-Net On-Line Guide: "Library of Congress Online"
[from H-NET@uicvm.uic.edu, H-NET@uicvm]
[you may copy and disseminate this Guide]
The Library of Congress catalog is now on line, free.
to get there use your TELNET command [see B below for help]
TELNET LOCIS.LOC.GOV
(no login or password needed)
if successful, you will get this screen: follow the menu
choices: <>
============================================================
L O C I S : LIBRARY OF CONGRESS INFORMATION SYSTEM
To make a choice: type a number, then press ENTER
1 Library of Congress Catalog 4 Braille and Audio
2 Federal Legislation 5 Organizations
3 Copyright Information 6 Foreign Law
7 Searching Hours and Basics
8 Documentation and Classes
9 Library of Congress General Information
12 Comments and Logoff
1. option 1 brings up this menu:
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG
CHOICE
1 BOOKS: English language books 1968-, French 1973-,
German, Portuguese, Spanish 1975-, other European
languages 1976-77, non-European languages 1978-79.
Some microforms 1984-.
2 BOOKS earlier than the dates above. Some serials,
maps, music, audiovisual items.
3 Combination of files 1 and 2 above (LOCI and PREM).
4 SERIALS cataloged at LC & some other libraries since
1973.
5 MAPS and other cartographic items cataloged at LC 1968-
and some other research libraries 1985-. Atlases
(which are books) are in LOCI and PREM
6 SUBJECT TERMS and cross references from LC Subject
Headings.
12 Return to LOCIS MENU screen.
2. LOCIS is available for on-site researchers during all hours
LC is open. For researchers using LOCIS over the Internet,
the following hours apply: (all times US eastern; closed
national holidays) Mon-Fri: 6:30am-9:30pm
Sat: 8:00am-5:00pm Sun: 1:00pm-5:00pm
The Library of Congress Information System (LOCIS) consists
of two systems.
1 SCORPIO provides browsable indexes, set creation, boolean
combinations, advanced limiting features, and individual
word searching in some files.
2 MUMS provides searching for individual words, searching
on some numbers, left-match "compression key" searching,
boolean combinations, and several advanced techniques.
You can combine the searching features of both systems.
HELP screens exist for most files and commands.
3. The Term Index, updated on 05/02/93, contains 8,847,765
terms.
CONTENTS: Books, some microforms:
TO START EXAMPLES:
SEARCH: subject --> browse solar energy
author --> browse faulkner, william
title 1 --> browse megatrends
call # (partial)-----> browse call QA76.9
individual words-----> find internet
LC card number ------> loci 80-14332
=====================================================
<>
B. USING TELNET:
Most college and university computers have telnet service
(but not all). Telnet is a way to log onto remote computers
(in this case, LOC.GOV = the Library of Congress). To log
on, of course, you need an account name (in this case
LOCIS). (Usually you need a password too, but not here.)
1. Exactly which procedure you use depends on the type of
mainframe you have: VAX ("VMS"), IBM ("VM" or "CMS") or
UNIX. (Sorry, I've never used UNIX.)
2. VAX mail looks like this:
# From Date Subject
1 VUNSF::"SLNELSON@ucs 1-JUN-1993 RE: message received
2 IN%"DRAYNOR@UOTTAWA. 1-JUN-1993
If you have a MAIL prompt when reading your mail, you have a
VAX. It's easy. Type QUIT and get the $ prompt. Then enter
TELNET LOCIS.LOC.GOV
or else try
TELNET 140.147.254.3
or try
TN3270 140.147.254.3
a) If you get: the telnet> prompt, try:
open 140.147.254.3
1) If you get:
$ TELNET LOCIS.LOC.GOV
%DCL-W-IVVERB, unrecognized command verb - check validity
and spelling
you're out of luck. Check with your computer center.
b) To exit: option 12 from main LC screen, then EXIT to get out
of telnet.
3. If you get this, you're IBM:
U08946 RDRLIST A0 V 164 Trunc=164 Size=7 Line=1 Col=1 Alt=0
Cmd Filename Filetype Class User at Node Hold Records Date
LISTOWNR MEMO PUN A U20566 UICVM NONE 357 05/24
HOLOCAUS LIST PUN N LISTSERV UICVM NONE 8 05/29
H-WOMEN LIST PUN N LISTSERV UICVM NONE 8 05/29
4. escape back out of mail (ESC 3 works for me; try also F3,
and ctl Z and esc . ) to the blank screen. Then enter
GETDISK TELNET
[a message says something like:
The TELNET minidisk is now attached RR as 500 M ]
then enter:
LOCIS.LOC.GOV
or
140.147.254.3
a) To exit: option 12 from main LC screen, then EXIT to get out
of telnet.
C. Hint: If you are using ProComm terminal, when you see a
screen you want to save, hit ALT G keys. This "dumps" the
screen into a file on your PC. (The name of the file is set
by the ProComm command ALT S 4 4 .
This is much easier than PrintScrn because you can use the
dump file in your word processor. In ProComm, the ALT F1
command opens a file that saves everything shown on the
screen. This works ok for VAX mainframe computers but adds
a huge amount of garbage on IBM mainframes.
D. Bibliography:
David L. Wilson, "Vast Catalog at Library of Congress Is Now
on Internet," Chronicles of Higher Education (June 2, 1993)
p. A16.
I have heard that only 60 ports are open--they surely need
600 for all the users who need access. Good luck! (and if
this how-to-guide is wrong or misleading, please let Richard
Jensen know at CAMPBELLD@apsu. Thanks RJ
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 15 Jul 1993 09:34:00 EST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: Re: Holocaust Museum = too negative/ fascist even??
[Date: Thu, 15 Jul 1993 03:47:49 -0500 (EST)
[From: RUEDNBRG%NYUACF.BITNET@uicvm.uic.edu
[Subject: Re: Holocaust Museum = too negative/ fascist even??
[To: HOLOCAUS%UICVM.BITNET@uchimvs1.uchicago.edu
>[Cecelia A Clancy wrote:
>If anybody is to have a true understanding of Holocaust Denial,
>then one MUST have a good understanding on how the news of the
>Holocaust has traumatized the German population in America.
[msg deleted....]
>I too am now being moved to bear witness. Anybody who knows
>how to log onto a newsreader go read the witness that I have been
>trying to bear witness in the USENET newsgroup of alt.revisionism
I logged on to read your posts in alt.revisionism. I was interested in
learning more of the American German response to the Holocaust, but
but I didn't find any such witness in your posts there. perhaps you can
explain something more here or refer me to something you may have published??
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Lucia Ruedenberg
New York University
Dept. of Performance Studies
Email: ruednbrg@ACFcluster.NYU.EDU
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 15 Jul 1993 11:39:00 EST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: Re: Re: Holocaust Museum = too negative/ fascist even?
[Date: Thu, 15 Jul 93 10:58 EDT
[From: Regina_IGEL%umail.umd.edu@uicvm.uic.edu (ri1)
[Subject: Re: Re: Holocaust Museum = too negative/ fascist even??
[To: Holocaust List
Pardon my naivete, but what is exactly the trauma that German Americans are
suffering re the Holocaust and/or the Museum of the Holocaust recently
inaugurated in Washington DC? How many are suffering the "trauma"? What are
doing about it other than signing checks to the Institute of Revisionism?
I appreciate if you could take of your time and reply to all or some of the
questions above. Thank you,
Regina Igel.
*********************************************************************
E-mail: Regina_Igel@umail.umd.edu OR RI1@umail.umd.edu
Snail-mail: Dr. Regina Igel
Department of Spanish and Portuguese
University of Maryland, College Park Campus
Maryland 20742 USA
Office Tel: (301) 405-6457 Office FAX: (301)314-9752
"If you need help at any time, press ?." -- Deus ex-machina***
***********************************************************************
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 16 Jul 1993 11:24:00 CST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: dealing with slavery and Holocaust
[Date: Thu, 15 Jul 1993 17:05:00 -0600 (CST)
[From: RICHARD JENSEN
[Subject: dealing with slavery & Holocaust
>From: "Dana Howard, Biomed Library"
>Subject: RE: Trauma and the Holocaust
>To: American Studies discussion list
> Paul Kosidowski writes:
> >I'd be interested in your thoughts on the new Holocaust
> >museum, which seems to use the holocaust as evidence of the supreme value
> >of American ideology. In last month's Harper's there is an account that
> >describes the museum as an antidote--an injection of fascism into the
> >American psyche that will bolster our psychic resources against fascist
> >tendencies. The mere fact of its existence seems to circumscribe
> >the Jewish experience/identity in wholly negative terms (imagine an
> >American "slavery" museum as opposed to an African-American museum). I'd
> >be interested in your or anyone's thoughts.
MICHELE ADDS:
> It's interesting that you bring up the subject of the Holocaust museum.
> I have quietly been upset about the manner in which we as Americans can vest
> so much interest in a trauma or tragedy which occurred on European soil, yet
> the most tragic calamity in modern history is U.S. slavery.
>
> STUFF DELETED...We have concluded that African Americans
> (of which I am) have been conditioned to believe that slavery represents a
> part of our history which we should be ashamed of. We have been constructed
> to believe that slavery is a calamity which the enslaved were responsible for.
STUFF DELETED
> argument, nonetheless, the negative psychic effects which slavery has had on
> African Americans precludes us from even imagining the possiblity of demanding
> a fair representation of our historical suffering within the realm of American
> culture. Hence there is no national slave museum to remind America of what
> her quest for freedom, individualism, and rights of man was really all about.
>
> Michele
> ls238c@gwuvm.gwu.edu
What Paul says about the holocaust being used as
"evidence of the supreme value of American ideology" sure rings
true here. I think that WWII was such an important experience
for a generation that they glorify our role in it and
recognizing the holocaust may be FOR SOME people part of that.
My mother-in-law who just died at age 79 refered to that war
time and again as the best time in US history. She described the
camp liberations as "our boys freeing the jews". She also saw
the sacrifices made here as bring out the best in us. I found
her observations rather revisionist, but she did seem to need
that memory to make sense of her anger over the 1960's and 70'
"decline" in American morals. She never discussed the atomic
bomb, tho I'm sure (since her husband was in the Pacific) she
had something to say about it.
Micheles point is very well taken. I am a European American with
strong Southern roots. The assumptions about white southerners
as all "Bubba" and inherently racist, sexist, and ill informed
generaly seems to be further evidence that we have failed to
deal with slavery in this country and by extension, see the
Civil War more clearly. To assume that the descendents of the
slave holding culture are intellectually defective is to assume
it was all just done by some people who didn't know any better.
Tho this is easier than thinking of Thomas Jefferson's
relationship with slavery, it does not serve us well.
Until we at least start a dialog outside of the academy about
this history, I don't think we can even fathom
institutionalizing the experience as we have with the Holocaust
Museum. Perhaps we are not strong enough to look in that mirror.
Dana
ecz5dch@uclamvs
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 16 Jul 1993 11:27:00 CST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: Americans' Knowledge of Holocaust
[Date: Thu, 15 Jul 1993 22:54:30 -0600 (CST)
[From: RICHARD JENSEN
[Subject: Americans' Knowledge of Holocaust
Survey Finds Americans' Knowledge Of Holocaust Seriously Lacking --
- More than 1 in 5 Americans said in a
survey it's possible the Holocaust never happened, the American
Jewish Committee said on April 19, 1993.
The Roper Organization survey was called the first systematic
study of Americans' knowledge of the Nazi's extermination of 6
million Jews before and during World War II. It also found many
adults and stu-dents don't know what Holocaust means. ''The only
word that comes to mind is it's frightening,'' said Elie Wiesel, a
Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor who chronicled his
experiences at the Auschwitz and Buchenwald camps. In conducting
the survey for the Jewish committee, Roper interviewed 992 adults
and 506 high school students.
The survey found 72% of adults and 64% of high school students
said it was essential or very important for all Americans to know
about and understand theHolocaust. In addition, 63% of adult
respondents and 54% of high school respondents rejected the idea
the Holocaust isn't relevant today because it happened almost 50
years ago. But the survey also found a ''disturbing'' lack of
knowledge about the Holocaust, Singer said. For example, 65% of
adults and 71% of high school students failed to recognize 6
million as the approximate number of Jewish people killed in the
Holocaust. Thirty-eight percent of adults and 51% of high school
students didn't identify Auschwitz, Dachau and Treblinka as
concentration camps. But even more disturbing, Singer said, was
that 22% of adults and 20% percent of high school students said it
seems possible the Nazi extermination of Jews never happened.
=====
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 16 Jul 1993 11:29:00 CST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: Job at Holocaust Museum
[Date: Fri, 16 Jul 1993 06:28:19 -0600 (CST)
[From: RICHARD JENSEN
[Subject: Job Opening at Holocaust Museum
Washington DC: U.S. Holocaust Memorial
Director of Academic Publications, G-12
The United States Holocaust Research Institute, part of the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, will open in December
1993. The Director of Academic Publications will organize and
direct a comprehensive program of scholarly publications with
the goals of assisting the publication of scholarly work
sponsored by the Institute and of expanding the Institute's
presence in the academic world. The ideal candidate will have
knowledge of current research on the Holocaust, twentieth-
century German and/or Jewish history, genocide studies and
related fields; experience in evaluating scholarly works for
publication; knowledge of publishing and editing processes; the
ability to read and write in a language related to the Holocaust
(e.g., German, Polish, Hebrew, and/or Yiddish); and the human
relations and communications skills necessary to work with a
diverse public of authors, readers, publishers, and colleagues.
This is a Federal Position. For application information,
call Aleisa Fishman at (202) 488-6116.
=======================================
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 16 Jul 1993 15:14:00 CST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: dealing with slavery and Holocaust
[Date: Fri, 16 Jul 93 15:24 EDT
[To: HOLOCAUS%UICVM.BITNET@uga.cc.uga.edu
[From: "Kenneth.Waltzer" <21409MGR%msu.edu@uic.edu>
[Subject: dealing with slavery and Holocaust
There ought to be a museum of African-American history on or near the mall in
Washington D.C.. It ought to deal with slavery, post-slavery sharecropping
and peonage, Jim Crow, discrimination, and segregation. It ought also to deal
with how African-Americans endured and triumphed under slavery, creating a
people and culture of their own, how African-Americans pushed emancipation,
and how they built post-Civil War communities of their own. It ought to deal
with migration, urbanization, and civil rights. with African-American
contributions to American politics, society, and culture, and with the
centrality of the African-American experience in definining rights for all of
us as Americans. Afric.-American experience is key for all of us.
However, preoccupation with American slavery as a parallel to something
like the Holocaust is, I think, misleading. Slavery, as an ongoing system of
unfree, bound labor, is better compared with other forms of bound labor, like
serfdom (see Peter Kolchin, Unfree Labor); and life in the plantation system
is better compared with other forms of master/slave relations than with "life"
in the death or concentration camps. This is a matter of debate, and there
are surely areas of overlap and fruitful comparison -- the dreaded middle
passage and the descent into the camps, slave labor on plantations and slave
labor in the camps, and so forth. What is distinctive, I think, in the
Holocaust is that it occurred in the 20th century -- nearly a century after
slavery was formally abolished in the West, that it occurred in a modern
Western nation, and that it was directed not at exploiting the bound labor of
its target population (a system of exploitation) but at extermining that
population altogether. I believe this should stand out in looking at slavery
and at genocide. The Holocaust was the planned, systematic effort to
exterminate a people. In this is its particularlity and also its universality
-- and its distinctiveness.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 1993 08:57:00 CST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: Re: Job at Holocaust Museum
[Date: Fri, 16 Jul 1993 18:22 EST
[From: BERNIE1%vms.cis.pitt.edu@uic.edu
[Subject: Re: Job at Holocaust Museum
[To: HOLOCAUS%UICVM.BITNET@uga.cc.uga.edu
B. Lieberman to All
Does anyone know a telephone number that one can call about getting
to see the holocaust museum.
I have called the main number of the museum 202-488-0400 many, many times
and no one answers.
Help ! Help!
B. Lieberman
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 1993 09:28:00 CST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: American credit/discredit re "liberating" the camps
[Date: Sat, 17 Jul 1993 00:57:33 -0600 (CST)
[From: RICHARD JENSEN
[Subject: American credit/discredit re "liberating" the camps
[To: holocaus%uicvm.BITNET@uchimvs1.uchicago.edu
Richard Tuerk writes:
> As for the Holocaust Museum, I consider it very important. It is a reminder t
> the world of something the world is all too likely to forget. It is certainly
> not a negative thing. Among other things, it says to the world that at least
> in principle, our nation will not tolerate this kind of thing ever again.
> Whether our actual practice will live up to the principle is another
> matter. Our lack of action in connection with the "ethnic cleansing" now
> occurring in Eastern Europe perhaps indicates that at least our national will
> is not as strong as it should be. At any rate, Jews view the Holocaust
> Museum in DC the way we view similar (but not as extensive or as well
> publicized) museums in places like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Dallas:
> as statements that we remember what happened in Europe during the 1930s and
> 1940s, and we'll do everything possible to keep it from happening ever again.
Point taken, but the "Americanization" of the Holocaust, as one critic put
it, reinforces a good/evil dichotomy that seems spurious at best. Not only
was our role in "liberating" the camps complicated and not totally deserving
of praise, but the museum suggests that America is worth celebrating solely
because a Holocaust could never happen here as long as we remember the
past. A point worth honoring to be sure, but it ignores the injustices
of American life that are specific to our historical situation. And tends
to promote a myopic celebration of American history, not to mention the
question of whether the museum actually "exploits" the personal and painful
history of real individuals to evoke American nationalism and ra-ra
patriotism.
--
Paul Kosidowski English--Modern Studies
pkosidow@csd4.csd.uwm.edu U of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
PO Box 413
Milwaukee, WI 53211
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 1993 09:30:00 CST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: Museum responses
[Date: Sat, 17 Jul 1993 16:55:57 -0600 (CST)
[From: RICHARD JENSEN
[Subject: museum responses
[To: holocaus%uicvm.BITNET@uchimvs1.uchicago.edu
[From: IN%"H-AMSTDY@UICVM.BITNET" "American Studies discussion list"
17-JUL-19
[ 93 11:06:52.63
Paul Kosidowski writes:
>...the "Americanization" of the Holocaust reinforces a good/evil dichotomy
>that seems spurious...the museum suggests that America is worth celebrating
>solely because a Holocaust could never happen here as long as we remember the
>past...the question of whether the museum actually "exploits" the personal and
>painful history of real individuals to evoke American nationalism and ra-ra
>patriotism.
I remember being in Jerusalem's Yad Vashem in July 1980 and being jarred by
what I saw there. I arrived on a "school day," when busload after busload of
Israeli teenagers were obviously being brought to see one of the most sacred
shrines in their national experience. Instead of being reverent when standing
in front of artifacts and pictures, however, they were the very opposite. While
sitting in a little theatre watching a short documentary about the atrocities
at Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, some of these kids sat at the back laughing,
making jokes to each other about the images, and popping gum.
What jarred me was the naturalness of these teenagers' reactions. It was
very clear they were bored to death, did not want to be in a place where
they would see horrifying things and did not want to have to absorb a
history lesson that brought no joy at all to them. I thought they
could have been better-mannered, or perhaps better-supervised,
but given their age, level of intellectual development and the
fact it was height of summer, I did not find myself faulting their
lack of appropriate behavior.
I think I share the same fears that Paul Kosidowski has about the
new Holocaust museum. I haven't been there, but I am concerned about
institutionalizing history in such a way that there is an appropriate
and socially acceptable response to it which is often separate from
any real feeling about the original experience, any connection to
the lives of the people who suffered. Of course, different people
will go to the museum and be moved by what they variously see, but
it does seem, from what I've read about it, that its design seems
part of a trend to politicize post WWII history, in order, as
Paul says, to "reinforce a good/evil dichotomy."
Jeff Finlay
New York University
finlay_j@spcvxa.spc.edu
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 1993 13:00:00 CST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: re: Job at Holocaust Museum
[Date: Mon, 19 Jul 93 10:12:19 -0400
[From: dzk%cs.brown.edu@uic.edu (Danny Keren)
[Message-Id: <9307191412.AA21096@cslab6b.cs.brown.edu>
[To: HOLOCAUS%UICVM.BITNET@brownvm.brown.edu
[Subject: Re: Job at Holocaust Museum
> I have called the main number of the museum 202-488-0400 many, many times
> and no one answers.
Just keep trying - I had the same problem and just let it ring for minutes,
eventually someone will answer. Have faith :-).
-Danny.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 1993 12:56:00 CST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: More evidence on Auschwitz gassings
[Date: 19 Jul 1993 09:57:16 -0400 (EDT)
[From: THOMPSON%ACAD.LVC.EDU%CARNEGIE.BITNET@uic.edu
[Subject: More evidence on Auschwitz gassings
[To: holocaus%uicvm.bitnet@uchimvs1.uchicago.edu
F Y I: See the NY TIMES for Sunday, 18 July 93, "Op-Ed" page [p.19].
Comments by Gerald Fleming, author of HITLER AND THE FINAL SOLUTION,
wherein he tells of his examination of Soviet material on the con-
struction and operations of the "Kremas" ( = SS nomenclature for gas
chambers and furnaces at Birkenaus and other camps), plus excerpts from
1946 Soviet interrogations of German engineers involved in building
the furnaces.
-- Warren Thompson
Dept of Religion & Philosophy
LEBANON VALLEY COLLEGE
Annville PA 17004
[end]
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 1993 13:36:00 CST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: Re: Museum Responses
[Date: Mon, 19 Jul 93 14:23:14 -0400
[From: dzk%cs.brown.edu@uic.edu (Danny Keren)
[Message-Id: <9307191823.AA21667@cslab6b.cs.brown.edu>
[To: HOLOCAUS%UICVM.BITNET@brownvm.brown.edu
[Subject: Re: Museum responses
This is in response to Jeff Finlay's article about the behavior of
Israeli teenagers when visiting Yad Vashem.
Firstly, kids can get nervous when witnessing things like this, and
their reaction can be partially explained as a relief of tension. I
passed through the Israeli education system and I don't think people
view the Holocaust as something un-important that happened many years
ago and is no longer interesting/relevant.
Another point is that young Israelis find it very hard to identify
with the tragedy of the Holocaust as they see themselves so much
different from those involved. Kids who grow up hearing about the
brave Jewish/Israeli fighters and the great accomplishments of the
Israeli army find it extremely difficult to understand how all these
people went quietly to their death. There is a painful experience in
confronting this, I would even go so far to say this is a somewhat
humiliating experience for some.
-Danny Keren.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 1993 15:02:00 CST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: Newspaper items
[Date: Sun, 18 Jul 1993 03:24:46 -0600 (CST)
[Subject: Newspaper items on Holocaust
A LOST WORLD
WASHINGTON POST: A SECTION, 04/18/93
By Judith Weinraub
Inscribed on a wall near the entrance to the main exhibition of the
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, these words foretell a journey that
makes such doubt unlikely. From the startling film of scenes witnessed
by American liberators at the concentration camps to a portion of a
barracks at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the visitor is confronted with the
reality of the Holocaust.
A German Torah ark -- its Hebrew inscription slashed. A low-to-the-
ground, narrow table where gold was removed from the teeth of corpses.
The trip through the permanent exhibition begins in stark gray steel
elevators that take visitors to the fourth floor, from which they wind
their way down. The first section emphasizes the world of European Jews
before the war. Photographs and film show ordinary life in its fullness:
men learning how to be tailors, Jewish shops from Danzig to Paris, a
tower of photographs of just about everyone who lived in a Lithuanian
town that was virtually wiped out.
STEP BY STEP, through spaces that evoke a world of powerlessness and
confinement, the takeover of Germany by the Nazis is recorded. In video
scenes of the first concentration camp in Germany. Facsimiles of
newspapers with ominous headlines. Posters that alerted civilians to the
Nuremberg race laws that stripped Jews of citizenship and barred them
from jobs. An early computer that tracked the location of German Jews,
made by a German subsidiary of IBM.
The tattered uniforms of concentration camp inmates are there too,
some with the symbols that identified them as Jews, homosexuals,
political or religious dissidents. And the battered feeding bowls that
were their lifeline. And the shoes, thousands of them heaped on top of
one another. And the wooden slatted bunks on which inmates slept, piled
eight or 10 on each of three tiers. And a truck chassis, misshapen and
charred after corpses were piled on it and burned.
AT MANY STAGES of the exhibition, visitors have options. Videos of
particularly graphic scenes are located behind privacy walls too high
for children to look over. To those who wish, computerized ID cards of
real people are issued before entering the exhibition. The details of
their lives, which are recounted in the museum's oral history archives,
can be updated at computer stations throughout the exhibition. (The real
ID cards and passports are there too, witnesses to the strictures placed
on various victim groups.)
If terror is recorded, so are courage and rescue. A Danish fishing
boat that could have saved no more than 14 or 15 escapees at a time
stands proud. The names and stories of non-Jewish rescuers cover an
entire wall. Brave, young German resistance fighters live on in
photographs long after their deaths.
NOT ALL OF THE museum is as intense as the permanent exhibition,
which is not recommended for children under 11. A separate presentation
intended for children 8 to 11 years old inaugurates one of the two
temporary exhibition spaces. A brightly lit, hexagonal hall at the end
of the main exhibition is intended for rest and reflection. An extensive
library occupies the entire fifth floor. A multimedia learning center on
the second floor houses 24 workstations with access to encyclopedic
Holocaust data.
Eisenhower's concern has been put to rest.
==========
Letters to the Editor of the Wall Street Journal
and the Washington Post re: Holocaust Museum
In the Absence of Love: Hatred and Evil
WALL STREET JOURNAL 04/30/93
I was touched by Amy Dockser Marcus's March 31 page-one article "As
Holocaust Memory Fades, Israel Faces a Difficult Transition." At the
end of the article, a survivor, Malka Dorfman, is quoted, asking who
would want to read what she would write down. I believe the story of
each survivor must be told and recorded. The only memory of many of
the six million Jewish victims is their edict to those lucky enough to
survive -- "zachor." It means "remember."
I served as a charter member of the President's Commission on the
Holocaust and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council since 1979. I was
the only child of a Holocaust survivor on both panels. I am also on
the New York State Holocaust Memorial Commission. My mother is a
survivor of the Holocaust, who lost a sister, and her parents. My
father was lucky enough to visit the World's Fair in 1939 in New York,
but left behind his mother and five brothers and sisters, who were
murdered by the Nazis.
The new identity Israel's postwar generation is seeking should
never dilute the meaning of the Holocaust. Extinction is not an honor.
I was born in America, but the atmosphere in my home managed to retain
some of the old country traditions. It provided me with a perspective
on life that gave joy a stronger meaning and sorrow a comprehensible
place without undue distortion.
I guess I agree with the survivors who fear the new generation will
never understand and will ultimately forget. It is natural to keep
one's distance from such an unprecedented horror, particularly if one
wasn't directly affected. Nevertheless, I think it would be
blasphemous for the next generation in Israel or anywhere else in the
world to put the Holocaust behind them. This horror must be taught and
studied and given a place in everyone's consciousness. The opening of
the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum will keep the flame of remembrance
alive.
Although times have changed, the dignity of memory for the
survivors should never diminish. Even as a child of a Holocaust
survivor there is a temptation to avoid painful thoughts about that
horrible period of Jewish history, but I can't allow myself that
luxury. Clearly one would rather go to the Bahamas for vacation than
touring Auschwitz, but having toured Auschwitz, Treblinka and Babi Yar
in 1979, I can say that my life was changed in a positive way by that
experience. By keeping the memory alive you feel fulfilled in your
obligation to the helpless victims that you will never forget them.
The Holocaust will always have an impact but don't depersonalize it,
just because we say "Never Again" doesn't mean it is impossible.
Hatred doesn't seem to go away, why should memory?
Steven A. Ludsin
New York
=================================================================
The article states: ". . . for instance, a program started in 1988
and supported by the Israeli government has permitted 6,000 high
schoolers to travel to Polish death camps with survivors, who explain
what happened on the sites, many of which have been preserved as
memorials. . . ."
The fact is, the camps in question were not Polish, but German
camps located in Poland. The use of the adjective "Polish" is here
callously misapplied as, also, many Christian Poles have perished in
the same camps.
Would you call camps operated during World War II by the Japanese
for American prisoners of war in the Philippines, "Philippino" or
"Japanese" camps?
Andrew Hempel
Secretary
Polish Solidarity Association
Reading, Pa.
===================================================
Ms. Marcus's excellent article mentions that there will be three
major museums/memorials in the U.S. While she names the U.S. Holocaust
Memorial Museum in Washington, and the Simon Wiesenthal Center's
Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, she neglects to mention the
institution slated for New York City, A Living Memorial to the
Holocaust/Museum of Jewish Heritage.
With a major commitment to public education for all ages,
nationalities and ethnic groups, the Museum of Jewish Heritage will
seek to address the generational concerns raised in Ms. Marcus's
article. By placing the Holocaust within the context of modern Jewish
and general world history, our Museum will honor the continuity of
Jewish culture and civilization, as well as memorialize the Six
Million. The Museum of Jewish Heritage is scheduled to open in Battery
Park City in 1995.
David Altshuler
Director
Museum of Jewish Heritage
New York
=======================================================
Ms. Marcus's article on the Holocaust prompts this, my first letter
to you in 20 years as a reader. I am not a Jew nor do I have any
immediate relatives or friends who perished in the Holocaust. These
circumstances do not disqualify me, at age 46, from thinking and
feeling about those frightening events 50 years ago. The Holocaust,
like nothing else in my experience, conjures up anger, fear and
compassion. Nothing makes me feel like crying as much as my thoughts
of that awful time with its awful deeds.
Because the Holocaust teaches us certain truths, it cannot be
allowed to slip from our collective memory. It teaches us the terrible
price tyranny exacts on real people, particularly on the defenseless.
It teaches us that humankind has the capacity for unthinkable cruelty
on the one hand, and an amazing strength of will on the other. It
teaches us that when we dismiss loving one another from our philosophy
of life, it is replaced, for some strange reason, by hatred. The
Holocaust is the justification for all of us, whatever our color,
wherever we live, whomever we call our God, to scream in the face of
the oppressor, "Never again."
William F. Collopy
Lexington, Ky.
=========================================================
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR:
In the Service of Truth
WASHINGTON POST: EDITORIAL, 04/28/93
The United States now has its own Holocaust Museum -- a signal,
according to the peculiar logic of Melvin Jules Bukiet ["The Museum vs.
Memory: The Taming of the Holocaust," Outlook, April 18] that we can go
on to think about other things. "Unfortunately," he writes, "the museum
will not spur the remembrances the donors seek, but will finally permit
this country to forget."
It is true that this nation must live with the knowledge that it
turned its back on Hitler's victims, but it's cynical to suggest that
the museum is nothing more than a hollow payback for that negligence.
An American Jewish Committee survey showed that 38 percent of
American adults and 53 percent of high school students do not connect
the Holocaust with Jews, Nazis, Germany or Hitler. If mankind isn't to
repeat its most horrific crimes, we can benefit from a museum like this
one in the same neighborhood where young people and adults go to learn
about the arts and technology. Yet Mr. Bukiet suggests that the
Holocaust Museum will reveal less about the Shoah than about those who
funded its memorial -- as if, say, the nearby Hirshhorn Museum sheds
less light on sculpture than on the egos of its benefactors.
No doubt the Holocaust Museum won't provide the aesthetic pleasures
of a Hirshhorn. In fact, its message is such that admission is
discouraged for children under 11. Let's hope that the Holocaust Museum
will do something to ensure that we never again have to build another
museum for adults only.
EVE MARKOWITZ
Teaneck, N.J.
===========================================================
I am amazed at Melvin Jules Bukiet's unbounding cynicism about the U.
S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. He asked why is this year different from
all other years? Has there really been a sea change in public awareness?
The reality is that the Holocaust is becoming a distant memory. It
is our obligation, as human beings, to teach future generations about
what happened and to memorialize the slaughtered innocents (Jews, gays,
Catholics, Gypsies).
Isn't a museum such as this, with its artifacts, videos and personal
stories, the most effective way of remembering once the survivors of the
Holocaust are gone?
Of course, it took a lot of "power" to build this museum -- $150
million was raised privately. Yes, there were many million-dollar
donors -- but there were many thousands of $100 donors like myself. This
museum could not have been built without both. This is a museum built by
the people.
Yes, the dead still scream. This museum's purpose is to ensure that
those screams are not in vain and that their memory will live on.
PAUL FRADIN Washington
=======================================================
My mother, Ilse Hess, a Holocaust survivor who was profiled in an
April 19 Style story, sent me the article by Melvin Jules Bukiet on the
U.S. Holocaust Museum.
I found his beautifully crafted essay to be outrageously cynical.
That being said, I find myself agreeing with him.
But what does he suggest? Would it be better not to have this
landmark museum? The dead cannot be compensated. Even survivors of the
Holocaust, the few who are left, cannot speak for the dead but only in
their behalf. Memory is not perfect, and there is no perfect memory. We
do the best we can.
More important, the ranks of those who deny or doubt the Holocaust
happened are growing. For that reason alone the Holocaust Museum is a
worthy enterprise in the service of truth. Mr. Bukiet should cut the
museum some slack.
STEVE HESS Rochester, N.Y.
=============================================================
STORY ID: 0000239858WJ
Turning a Page:
As Holocaust Memory
Fades, Israel Faces
A Difficult Transition
---
Postwar Generation Seeks
A New Kind of Identity,
To Dismay of Survivors
---
Trading With the Germans
WALL STREET JOURNAL (J) 03/31/93
Copyright (c) 1993 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
By Amy Dockser Marcus
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
JERUSALEM -- Yitzhak Cohen forgets nothing, but one story in
particular marks his days and nights: It is 1943 and he is young, 20
years old, and on a stifling cattle car that has arrived in Poland
after a week's travel from Greece. When the doors slide open, his
mother can't hustle off the car fast enough and she is beaten by
German soldiers. He rushes to protect her, but he is beaten as she is
hauled away.
That image seems frozen -- his reaching, her screaming -- because
it is the last time he saw his mother, before she disappeared through
the gates of Auschwitz.
Mr. Cohen, now 70, recounts it all without a break, bearing witness
for 50 Israeli soldiers who listen solemnly, machine guns on their
laps, in an auditorium at Yad VaShem, Israel's memorial to the
slaughter of one-third of the Jewish people in World War II.
Some would say it is recollections like Mr. Cohen's that have
helped forge the state of Israel, its fierce army and a Jewish
community world-wide that, in word and deed since the war, has
responded: "Never again."
But something has changed. The young soldiers, here as part of
their basic training, say Mr. Cohen's story offers them no clear
message, that things are different now that Jews have attained power.
After several soldiers suggest that the Holocaust should make Israelis
more sensitive to harassment of Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied
West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Mr. Cohen erupts: "Nothing we do there
could ever compare to what the Nazis did to us. How can you even make
such a comparison?"
One soldier refuses to back down. "I'm not saying we're Nazis," he
responds, "but in the occupied territories, there are Israeli soldiers
who humiliate Arabs for no reason, just because they're Arabs. We
don't need to just keep one hand on our guns. We should also keep one
hand on our pulse."
A painful memory is fading. As the generation who survived the
Holocaust grows old and passes away, the defining event is naturally
slipping from heartfelt to merely historical, causing something of an
identity crisis among Jews in Israel and elsewhere.
"The Holocaust and its common tragic lesson was a booster shot" for
Jews worldwide, says Barry Shrage, head of Boston's Combined Jewish
Philanthropies. "But for a whole generation born after the Holocaust,
this burning memory is less compelling. As we move further and further
away from the Holocaust, we're on shaky ground from the standpoint of
Jewish identity."
Bitter lessons of the Holocaust have been mortar binding Jews of
disparate backgrounds and cultures, helping to create Israel in 1948
as a place where Jews could always find refuge and helping it attract
donations from across the globe ever since. The "Holocaust mentality,"
Jewish scholars say, helped prompt achievement among many Jews since
World War II, especially in the U.S. -- success spurred by the relish
of simply being alive and colored by the guilt of having survived when
so many did not.
How Jewish identity may shift as the Holocaust fades is a subject
of intense debate: Will it mean a less defensive political posture,
especially in the state of Israel, where leaders who lost family
members in the Holocaust -- such as Menachem Begin, Shimon Peres and
Yitzhak Shamir -- have dominated public life for decades; or, maybe,
an accelerated assimilation, notably in the U.S., where 52% of Jews
already marry outside the faith, many producing children with a
tenuous connection to Judaism?
It is not that anyone has forgotten the Holocaust, or that Jews of
any age seek to play down its horror. But there is little in the lives
of most postwar Jews that connects them with this event of profound
devastation, literally a threat of extinction. This is troubling to
many older Jews, who worry that such casualness will result in
lessened vigilance against tyranny or against more subtle threats,
such as disappearing into a Christian majority.
One response has been to capture and burnish fading Holocaust
recollections -- in effect, to speak louder as the audience's
attention wanes. Three new memorials are opening in the U.S.,
including the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, which
opens next month on donated federal land.
Nowhere is the conflict and confusion more wrenching, however, than
in Israel, where roughly one in every 17 residents is a Holocaust
survivor: someone who lived under occupation by Germany or its allies
between 1939 and 1945, including those in concentration or labor
camps, in ghettos or in hiding. But with the average age for Israel's
290,000 survivors -- more than half the world's survivors -- nearing
70, and annual mortality rates due to reach 10% by the late 1990s,
they are a fading voice.
In their place comes the generation of Jews, many young and middle-
aged adults now assuming political and social power, for whom the
Holocaust is someone else's memory. "For us, the disaster of the
Holocaust is less personal," says Dedi Zucker, a 44-year-old member of
parliament's left-wing Meretz party. "It still has impact, but it's on
a more abstract, collective level and we're reluctant to use it
politically."
While Menachem Begin often invoked the Holocaust as a warning that
Jews must always remain vigilant, his son, Ze'ev, a leader of the
Likud party, rarely mentions it. "I feel very strongly about the issue
and feel it shapes the identity of this nation," says Ze'ev Begin.
"But one thing to take into account is the time that has elapsed.
Forty years ago, it was only 10 years past the event. Today it is 50
years. That does something to the frequency of the discussion."
Cobi Moise, a 32-year-old Tel Aviv businessman whose father, a
Holocaust survivor, died in 1989, says he won't pass on the burdens he
grew up with. "I don't see my children as some sort of third
generation of Holocaust survivors," he says, lunching at a Tel Aviv
cafe where young professionals gather. "I just see them as normal
Israeli kids."
Across the table, 30-year-old Yoram Cohen says his boss, a
Holocaust survivor, recently rebuffed a German financier who wanted to
invest in his medical supplies company. "He lost a lot of money
because he refuses to do business with Germans," says Mr. Cohen. "I
would have taken the deal."
Such opinions have become mainstream. Though the Israeli
Philharmonic Orchestra reversed plans in 1991 to play the music of
Richard Wagner -- a favorite of Hitler -- after protests from
survivors, polls showed only 30% of subscribers objected to the
music's being played. Similarly, copies of "Mein Kampf," Hitler's
autobiography, are now studied in an Israeli university after being
banned for decades. Next to the U.S., Germany is now Israel's largest
trading partner.
Coziness with anything German would have been unthinkable 10 years
ago out of respect for survivors. Times have changed. A hot play in
Israel these days is about a Holocaust survivor who becomes a vengeful
slumlord and is depicted as manipulative and crass. The play, called
"Singer," is especially popular with young people because "they're
ready to see a survivor who isn't a saint," says the play's director,
Micah Lewensohn.
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, sensing the shift, has recently
commented that there is nothing wrong with Jews losing what he called
their "siege mentality." Yet, in a poignant speech last summer to the
World Zionist Congress, he wondered: "What will be the link between us
when the longed-for day arrives -- when there will be no more
bloodshed, no tears, no danger?"
At United Jewish Appeal, an umbrella fund-raising organization for
U.S. Jews' contributions to Israel, officials are concerned that
donations will sag as donors age. "We now need to appeal to a
generation that has no personal recall of life without Israel or life
during the Holocaust," says Yael Septee, 37, the director of the
organization's Young Leadership Cabinet. "This generation doesn't have
the same motivation to give as my parents' generation."
Even at Yad VaShem in Jerusalem, the most renowned of Holocaust
memorials, a generational passage is occurring. "The survivor has
become a priest, preaching to you what is right and what is wrong, and
because of his story, he is holy," says Shalmi Barmore, 47, the
education director at the memorial, who notes that Yad VaShem's board
members are rapidly being replaced by those with no recollection of
the war. "When the survivors are no longer here it will be like a
screen being lifted. There'll be more freedom to speak and go in
diverse directions."
Or freedom to forget about the Holocaust altogether, fears Uri
Aloni. In 1937, as a 14-year-old, he said goodbye to his parents and
stepped aboard one of the last trains to safely transport Jews from
Nazi Germany.
Now 70, his family having long ago perished under Hitler, Mr. Aloni
anxiously paces a classroom in a kibbutz near the Israeli coastal town
of Netanya, where he is leading a seminar on the Holocaust for
Israelis training to be teachers. "What does the Holocaust mean to you
as Israelis?" he asks the students.
No response. The room feels stuffy, and someone opens a window to
let an afternoon breeze stir the air. Moving to the blackboard, Mr.
Aloni holds up a piece of chalk, poised to write, and queries, "What's
the date of Holocaust memorial day?"
Silence. He waits. A few students look away. "It's the same date
every year," he mutters, visibly annoyed.
After class, Mr. Aloni has calmed somewhat. "One-third of the
Jewish nation was killed during the Holocaust. This isn't just another
pogrom in Jewish history," he says. "But I'm troubled about how to
hand over this legacy. We can't transfer the atmosphere to these kids.
They don't understand the fear and helplessness we felt. My own
grandchildren don't even ask me about it. We have to face reality. For
these kids, life goes on."
Some, however, welcome the rise of a generation for whom the
Holocaust "isn't emotionally intense," says Rabbi Irving Greenberg,
the president of the National Jewish Center for Learning and
Leadership in New York. Throughout Jewish history, he says, there have
always been certain events that "Jews lived, and then lived by," the
most notable being the exodus from Egypt, celebrated next week at
Passover, where only the children of those once enslaved by Pharaoh
were ultimately permitted to enter the Promised Land. "The experience
of slavery wasn't as emotionally immediate for them, but in the end
they were the ones who could function effectively with the memory,"
says Rabbi Greenberg. "For the Holocaust, just as it was in the story
of Exodus, it is the generation that didn't live the experience that
is better at functioning with it."
A few hours after his confrontation with the soldier at Yad VaShem,
Yitzhak Cohen is still shaken. "I was angry with him, very angry," he
says. "Nothing can be compared to the Holocaust." As Mr. Cohen speaks,
he gets out a videocassette of a trip he made with other survivors and
their Israeli-born children back to the camp where he spent 18 months.
It is a strange scene: a courtly man in a middle-class Jerusalem home,
watching himself on television as he points out the spot where his
sisters were taken to the gas chambers.
He continues to speak, but he can't seem to drag his eyes from the
screen, where he is now standing in a cattle car like the one that
brought him to the death camp. For a moment, he is silent. "Our
generation is dying," he finally says, freezing the picture, and when
he looks up his eyes are filled with tears. "We are in the hands of
the young."
Mr. Cohen's angst, echoed by many older Jews, has spurred various
programs and memorials to shore up eroding connections to the
Holocaust. For instance, a program started in 1988 and supported by
the Israeli government has permitted 6,000 high schoolers to travel to
Polish death camps with survivors, who explain what happened on the
sites, many of which have been preserved as memorials. This year,
however, Israel's education minister, Shulamit Aloni, considered
canceling the trips, saying they turn students into flag-waving
xenophobes and emphasize "the fact that we were victims and that
victims can do no wrong."
Similar endeavors to capture fading Holocaust recollections have
been led in America by creation of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum,
where architectural features reminiscent of the death camps will mesh
with photos, recordings and artifacts to leave the strongest emotional
impact possible. At the $50 million Museum of Tolerance at the Simon
Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, which opened in February, television
screens, computers and videos that some critics have called "MTV
effects" tell the Holocaust story to youngsters. High-tech slickness
"makes the message of the Holocaust compelling and dramatic," says
Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder of the center. Otherwise, he says, "we
won't communicate with this generation."
But such efforts carry a grain of futility, says Hillie Mudrick, a
young Israeli journalist who has written about Holocaust survivors.
"What they felt we won't feel, no matter how hard we try or how much
we want to identify with them," she says.
She and most other young Jews can, of course, talk thoughtfully
about the Holocaust, but, as one of Uri Aloni's teacher trainees
remarked, "For us, it is history."
A place in history -- another pogrom among many -- is where some
Jews feel the Holocaust now belongs.
"My parents brought the Holocaust up all the time, even at the
dinner table," says Tova Dorfman, 34, whose late father passed the war
hiding in Poland while her mother worked in a munitions factory at a
Nazi death camp. "If we didn't like a meal, my mother would say, `When
you're hungry, you'll eat even this.'"
"Because I was bombarded with it, I want space from it now," she
adds, sitting in her mother's living room in a Tel Aviv suburb as the
two discuss, for the first time, their divergent views of a central
event in both their lives.
"When my children were growing up," says Malka Dorfman, 76, "we
spoke about the war all the time. Now they don't want to hear about
it. They think I talk too much about it."
Without prompting, Mrs. Dorfman brings out a book memorializing the
Jews of Kozienice, the Polish town where she grew up. Flipping through
the pages, she points to wedding pictures of family and friends who
were killed, photos of plays being put on at the community center, the
gates to the Jewish cemetery, a whole culture and community destroyed.
Her daughter sits on the couch silently watching as her mother loses
herself in the photographs.
"He was a doctor, such a pretty wife, such nice children," she
says, pointing at one photo. "He killed himself rather than get on the
train to the concentration camp."
As she is speaking, her grandchildren run into the house and grab
at the cookies she has set out for a visitor. She doesn't speak with
them about the Holocaust, she says, so as not to burden them. Every
year, she attends a memorial held by members of the town where her
late husband grew up, and she notices that virtually none of the
survivors' adult children bother to come anymore.
"Every night, I dream about what I saw. I remember everything," she
says, closing the album. "I should write it all down. But who would
want to read it?"
(See related letters: "Letters to the Editor: In the Absence of
Love, Hatred and Evil" -- WSJ April 30, 1993)
930331-0119
STORY ID: 0000060604WP
PR and the Holocaust
WASHINGTON POST: OP-ED, 04/01/93
Copyright (c) 1993 The Washington Post Co.
008 TO ACKNOWLEDGE that commemorating the Holocaust is a difficult
matter, full of anguish and sometimes awkwardness not only for Jews but
for Germans as well, is to do no more than state the obvious. Nor should
it surprise anyone that the planned opening of Washington's Holocaust
Memorial Museum near the Mall on April 26 -- after many years of
sometimes fierce controversy over whether, where and how such a museum
should go about its task in the context of the American capital -- has
been a matter of intense interest in Germany as well. Germans of the
current, postwar generation have a natural interest in the portrayal of
this bleakest period in their -- and everybody's -- history. But it is a
good thing that the Holocaust museum's planners resisted what appear to
have been subtle and not-so-subtle pressures to include some material
that would balance the Nazi history with a more positive presentation on
postwar German democracy. Surely, after all these years of painful and
often exemplary self-examination, German leaders should accept that the
Holocaust cannot be treated as a German international image problem.
Their efforts, Marc Fisher reports, included strong pressure on the
museum from the German government to include a postwar-Germany exhibit;
a German-government-funded foundation also explored efforts to get
American schools to have the same sort of balancing message included in
school curriculums. Ironically, domestic German efforts to deal with the
Holocaust have generally stressed the degree to which Nazi atrocities
have universal, not specifically German, meaning -- as examples of the
depths to which human beings can sink and the dangers of letting any
society careen off the moral rails. This, not some generalized opinion
about Germany per se, is the lasting relevance of this horror and the
reason why remembering it is a paramount moral duty.
It's an emphasis the Washington museum shares: Ronald Reagan, at a
cornerstone-laying ceremony for the museum in 1988, said the building
would "examine the nature and meaning of the continuing curse that is
antisemitism" and draw attention to "those even among our own countrymen
who have dedicated themselves to ... minimizing or even denying the
truth of the Holocaust." That thrust -- relevant in all societies, not
least in today's Europe with its roiling ethnic threats and
tensions -- is one the German government no less than any other
country's government would do well to join in emphasizing. Remembering
great evil is hard for any society, and particularly for a society in
which the atrocity actually happened. But that's because evil, once done,
isn't undone or even touched by subsequent history. Public relations
won't change that.
STORY ID: 0000248767WJ
LEISURE & ARTS -- Bookshelf:
Israelis' View of Holocaust
WALL STREET JOURNAL (J) 07/15/93
Copyright (c) 1993 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
By Amy Dockser Marcus
Standing in a Nazi concentration camp during a recent trip to
Poland, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin gave an emotional speech
about the legacy of the Holocaust and then declared at the end: "This
terrible tragedy will never be repeated. We will protect every Jew
everywhere."
Over the years, the promise contained in Mr. Rabin's speech has
served as a kind of social compact between Israel and the Jewish
diaspora. Therefore readers of Tom Segev's controversial new book,
"The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust" (Hill & Wang,
593 pages, $27.50), may find it shocking to discover that the early
Zionist leaders had a chance during the Holocaust to save Jews in
Europe but didn't believe that such a task was their responsibility.
"The Seventh Million" is a compelling and disturbing work that
begins with the Nazi rise to power and ends with the Persian Gulf War
60 years later. Mr. Segev, a journalist with the left-wing daily
newspaper Ha'aretz , belongs to a new school of Israeli historians who
came of age after the founding of the state in 1948. In recent years,
these scholars have published books that challenge the myths
surrounding everything from the War of Independence to the Arab-
Israeli conflict.
Mr. Segev's book tackles Israel's complex relationship with the
Holocaust, a delicate task in a country where roughly one in 17
residents is a Holocaust survivor. The book contends that Israel's
founding generation was far more preoccupied with internal party
politics than with trying to stop the destruction of one-third of the
world's Jewish population. Citing historical documents, Mr. Segev
shows that discussions on a strike at a canning factory and plans for
a May Day celebration took precedence over rescuing Europe's Jews.
Moreover, despite the crisis in Europe, the leaders of the Jewish
state-to-be insisted on selecting refugees to rescue based on the
needs and ideology of the Jewish community in Palestine.
While the prestate Jewish community in Palestine could not have
saved millions of Jews, Mr. Segev concludes that it nonetheless did
not do enough. What stopped it weren't technical problems inherent in
wartime rescues or even the difficulties in raising funds, he says,
but rather the vast spiritual chasm that existed between the Zionist
leaders and the events unfolding in Europe. The Zionists maintained
that their movement was one of salvation for all Jews, but at the same
time they harbored deep contempt for the diaspora, its history,
culture and religious traditions. In the end, their sense of moral
superiority and all-consuming focus on state-building resulted in only
a few of the Jews who survived the Holocaust owing their lives to the
Zionist movement.
Eventually, the hardhearted pragmatism of the early leaders gave
way to a deepening emotional identification with the Holocaust. The
transformation accelerated in the 1970s, when Israel's building of
Jewish settlements on the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the Arab oil
embargo of the West led to the country's growing diplomatic isolation.
Over time, Israelis increasingly began to see parallels between their
own predicament and the Holocaust. They abandoned the Zionist notion
that they were "new Jews" free of the ghetto mentality that supposedly
characterized the diaspora and started to view themselves as the
latest in a long line of Jewish victims, living in isolation and
dependent on the goodwill and financial assistance of outsiders in
order to survive. The Holocaust, once considered a shameful, distant
trauma, instead came to be seen as the defining event of the modern
state that rose in its wake.
The book's major flaw is that Mr. Segev's sharp voice frequently
gets lost in the overwhelming wealth of detail he has uncovered. The
early chapters on the prestate leaders' reactions to the Holocaust,
particularly that of Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion,
are fast-paced and riveting. But in subsequent sections of the book,
particularly on subjects that have already been well-documented
elsewhere, such as the 1961 trial in Jerusalem of the Nazi war
criminal Adolf Otto Eichmann, Mr. Segev shies away from providing the
kind of interpretation that is critical in a work of this magnitude
and gets bogged down recounting minute developments in the innumerable
ideological disputes between the various political factions.
In the final section of his book, Mr. Segev indicates that there
are clear beginnings of a fundamental shift in attitudes toward the
Holocaust, as young Israelis begin to look outward toward the larger
world with less fear and more confidence than preceding generations
did, a change he seems to welcome. The Holocaust, he concludes,
sabotaged the realization of the Zionist dream that Israel would
become a nation like all other nations. He laments the fact that this
dream was replaced by a nationalistic outlook characterized by what he
terms "insular chauvinism" and a sense that Israel's fate is to dwell
alone. Mr. Segev does not advocate forgetting the Holocaust, but his
book offers an eloquent plea against allowing it to overshadow the
vision of an Israel that is more than just a refuge for the
persecuted.
---
Ms. Dockser Marcus is a Journal reporter in Tel Aviv.
STORY ID: 0000062926WP
The Secret Suffering of Israel's Holocaust Survivors
WASHINGTON POST: STYLE, 04/23/93
Copyright (c) 1993 The Washington Post Co.
By David Hoffman
Washington Post Foreign Service
JERUSALEM -- Zvi Zelinger arrived in Israel at the birth of the
state in 1948. He was only 11 years old and had already survived the
ordeal of a lifetime as a precocious and daring Jewish boy, dodging
soldiers in basements and attics outside of Warsaw.
When he got to Israel, he had a story to tell. After liberation by
the Russians from a cellar in rural Poland in 1945, he had walked back
to his home, wearing one shoe and starving, only to find his family had
perished. But, Zelinger recalled recently, no one in Israel wanted to
listen to him. The War of Independence was underway.
"They were fighting for their immediate survival," Zelinger said.
"They wouldn't listen. We were close to another Holocaust, right here."
Zelinger's experience was not unique. More than two-thirds of the
Holocaust survivors eventually came to Israel, and today there are an
estimated 300,000 living here. They were scorned and laughed at on their
arrival, seen as weak victims at a time when the state was being led by
domineering fighters.
Although the death of 6 million Jews has long figured prominently in
the ideology of Israeli political leaders and in the very existence of
the state, those Israelis who actually experienced the Holocaust often
bore the memories of their suffering in silence.
The Israeli author Tom Segev describes this anguished secrecy in a
book being published in the United States this week, "The Seventh
Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust" (Hill & Wang). The book, a
bestseller in Israel when it was released in Hebrew last year, recalls
one of the earliest chroniclers of the Nazi atrocities, Yechiel Dinur,
an Auschwitz survivor.
Dinur wrote under a pseudonym, his picture never appeared with his
book, he never gave interviews, and he always wore a long-sleeved shirt
in sultry Tel Aviv so he could hide the number imprinted on his arm.
According to Segev, Dinur wanted to keep a barrier between his life in
Israel and his earlier suffering, a barrier that Segev said was a
metaphor for much of Israeli society in the early years after the war,
but a barrier that has been crumbling.
"Our own society had a conspiracy of silence," said John Lemberger,
director-general of Amcha, the National Israeli Center for Psychosocial
Support of Survivors of the Holocaust and the Second Generation. "At the
beginning of the state, people didn't want to know. They didn't want to
hear of the weak Jews. Now, many of the survivors are opening up 50
years later. They want to talk."
Segev said in an interview that the survivors' desire to speak out
is part of a larger transformation in Israeli society, reflecting a more
mature examination of the Holocaust. "The Holocaust survivors always
start by explaining why they couldn't have resisted, in a very
apologetic tone," he said. "This is what they carry from the 1950s. They
were blamed for not having resisted. This was a very heroic period in
our history.
"Young people today don't even ask that question," Segev said.
"People today have a much more refined and mature attitude. They have
developed the capability of sympathizing with the victim. The survivors
are still living in a period when the country was ashamed, and the kids
today are no longer ashamed.
"At the beginning, the Holocaust was presented as something demonic
and satanic, the emphasis was on acts of fate," he said. "The more time
passed, Israeli textbooks have taken the much more difficult task to
tell the students as human beings that we all share responsibility for
things that happen in modern society. It is a much more troublesome
message."
In the past few years, Israelis have been debating the Holocaust as
never before. The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe has provided
opportunities that were long denied for Israelis to return to their old
home towns and the sites of the concentration camps. The Arab uprising
in the West Bank and Gaza Strip plunged many young students and soldiers
into moral debates about the limits of their actions, debates that
invariably reached back to the Holocaust. A series of Israeli political
leaders, led by Menachem Begin and later Yitzhak Shamir, tried to invoke
the Holocaust as a powerful symbol of the isolation of the Jews. And
Israeli culture has increasingly probed the outer limits of debate about
the Holocaust; a recent play drew criticism when it depicted a puppy
named "Shoah," the Hebrew word for the genocide.
In one such debate, some parents and educators recently questioned
the wisdom of a government-funded program started in 1988 that has sent
thousands of Israeli teenagers to visit Auschwitz. The critics said the
trips would only result in the youths feeling more vulnerable or hateful.
"What do we teach the students in Poland?" asked Segev, who
describes one high school visit in his book. "They can come back and say,
'We learned how antisemitic the world is,' they can come back and
become very closed, very xenophobic. Or they can bring back universal
values." Segev's argument is that Israelis need to "place Holocaust
teachings into history, and take them away from national mythology."
"It was not the act of some Satan," he said. "It was the act of
man -- social and political conditions made it possible. It is our
responsibility to make sure they do not repeat themselves."
From their schoolbooks, Israeli students learn that Israel's
mission is to ensure that the Holocaust never be allowed to happen again.
This lesson, according to Segev, contributed to three of the most
weighty decisions taken by the Jewish state after its creation: the
massive inflow of Jewish immigrants, the program to build a nuclear
weapon, and the Six Day War.
"You cannot understand Israel without understanding the role of the
Holocaust in our biography," said Segev. "But it is very difficult to
distinguish between the genuine feeling we have, and the political
manipulation of the Holocaust. ... When Begin sent the Israeli army to
Beirut to capture 'Hitler' in his bunker, this was a clear case of a
manipulating argument. Also, when people on the far left say they cannot
serve in the Israel army because it's like the Nazis, this is a clear
case of using the Holocaust for political manipulation."
The evolving struggle of Israelis to come to grips with the
Holocaust recently has included more survivors coming forth, spurred on
by a combination of events. Many of them are simply frail and decided to
speak out before they die. But life in Israel also has put these
survivors through their own recent traumas -- the war crimes trial of
John Demjanjuk and the subsequent controversy over his conviction; the
fears generated by the Persian Gulf War; the emotions sparked as they
recently watched television reports of the rise of neo-Nazis in Germany.
Some also have been prompted to open up because of a lengthy and
detailed new questionnaire they must fill out to qualify for German
reparations.
Karla Pilpel, a 61-year-old retired public health nurse in Jerusalem,
said that for more than 30 years she didn't talk to her children about
her experiences as a Jewish child in prewar Germany. "I thought they
weren't interested, and they didn't want to hurt me," she recalled. "I
felt I had no right to complain -- I survived and I didn't go through
the concentration camps."
But in recent years, she finally told them of the horrors she
endured, including how she was sexually molested as a child refugee.
(She escaped the Nazis when she was evacuated to England, and later
married a native-born Israeli.) She opened up, she said, because "the
clock is ticking away."
Yitzhak Mendelson, a clinical psychologist who works with survivors
who seek help at Amcha, said many of them, only children at the time of
Hitler, are now reaching a point late in life where they have to let go
of the painful recollections. "At first, people were building their
lives here, worrying about their economic security. You cannot do
[several] emotionally complicated things at the same time. It's not by
chance that now, many of them are feeling it's time to speak."
Segev said the 1991 gulf war was a vivid turning point for many
Israelis because it brought the fear of the Holocaust into their daily
lives.
"The state was not in danger, and everyone knew it. But every
individual was in danger, when you saw the missile leaving Baghdad, and
you waited, five or six minutes, to see if it would hit you. We were all
sitting in sealed rooms wearing gas masks, completely isolated and
helpless. This is the ghetto. This is what not many people realized at
the time, but afterwards it became clear," he said. "In all previous
wars, we were riding tanks. This time you did nothing. And we were
talking about gas that was made in Germany. While we were sitting in our
sealed rooms, we could see [on television] Herman Wouk's 'War and
Remembrance.' "
STORY ID: 0000071101WP
Antisemitic History: The Fate of the 6 Million
WASHINGTON POST: BOOK WORLD, 07/11/93
Copyright (c) 1993 The Washington Post Co.
By Paul Johnson
DENYING THE HOLOCAUST
The Growing Assault on
Truth and Memory By Deborah E. Lipstadt
Free Press. 278 pp. $22.95
ANTISEMITISM is one of the oldest and most persistent of human
delusions. Some Jews resignedly believe it is ineradicable. It is
protean and takes countless different forms, so that it is peculiarly
resistant to empirical disproof: Nailed in one shape, it instantly
reappears in another, often contradictory one. The fact of the Holocaust
ought to have ended antisemitism everywhere, forever. The characteristic
response of the antisemites has been to deny that it happened, and to
posit the existence of yet another secret Jewish conspiracy to foist
onto a gullible world the myth that six million Jews were killed by the
Nazis.
In fact, Holocaust-denial is now the fastest-growing and probably the
commonest form of antisemitism. In the United States, where it appears
regularly on the campus and in innumerable extremist publications of
both Left and Right, it is easily given a current political context.
Thus: "Each year a foreign government literally steals millions of
dollars from you and other U.S. taxpayers. The thief is the corrupt,
bankrupt government of Israel . . . And the theft is perpetrated
primarily through the clever use of the Greatest Lie in all
history -- the lie of the 'Holocaust.' "
This particular statement was put out by an organization called the
Institute for Historical Research, a pseudo-academic body that has been
one of the most energetic exponents of Holocaust-denial. In 1979 it held
the first "Revisionist Convention" in Los Angeles. The IHR had been
founded the year before by Lewis Brandon, who was born in 1951 in
Northern Ireland and has a long record of fascist activities on both
sides of the Atlantic. His real name was William David McCalden, though
he also operated as David Stanford, David Berg, Sonda Ross and David
Finkelstein. Behind McCalden was an older man called Willis Carto,
identified by the Anti-Defamation League as the most important and
professional antisemite in the United States. Born in 1926 in Indiana,
Carto was a member of the John Birch Society until he quarreled with its
founder, Robert Welch. He then set up his own organization, which
eventually emerged as the Liberty Lobby and by the 1980s had an annual
income of close to $4 million. This financed the IHR and its publication,
Spotlight, which by the early 1980s claimed a circulation of 330,000
and was connected with other antisemitic outlets such as the American
Mercury, Washington Observer Newsletter and Noontide press. All
assiduously propagate Holocaust-denial.
The U.S. is not the only country where this form of antisemitism
flourishes. It is to be found all over Europe, particularly in France
and in former Communist states, in Latin America and even in Japan,
where Jews are rare but extremist groups plentiful. It takes many forms.
Some deniers say that the Holocaust was a complete fabrication from
start to finish. Others, such as President Tudjman of Croatia, claim
that the numbers of Jews killed has been hugely and deliberately
exaggerated: Tudjman insists that only 900,000 Jews died. Another
approach is to produce "scientific evidence" that Jews who died in the
death-camps could not have been killed in the way historians and war-
crimes tribunals have asserted. In particular, deniers claim that Zyklon-
B gas was totally inappropriate as a homicidal agent. A Boston engineer
called Fred A. Leuchter, who specialised in constructing execution
apparatus, was sent out to Auschwitz and Majdanek to collect "forensic
samples" and on his return produced a report that concluded there had
never been homicidal gassings at these sites. Yet another common tactic
is to attack the authenticity of The Diary of Anne Frank, which has sold
over 20 million copies in scores of countries as well as being made into
a prize-winning play and movie. For countless people, it personifies the
tragedy and horror of the Holocaust. But deniers claim that the Diary is
a post-war invention, written by a professional New York playwright in
collaboration with Anne Frank's father.
Deborah Lipstadt, who teaches religious studies at Emory University
and who has already written a useful work on the presentation of the
original Holocaust story in the American media, has now produced a
documented history of the rise and spread of Holocaust-denial. Her
object was two-fold. First, she wanted to establish -- and does so
beyond any doubt -- that denial activities in no case spring from
genuine efforts to question or revise established history or from any
concern for the truth, but are conducted by convinced fanatics whose
antisemitism long antedated any "scientific" interest in Holocaust
studies. A few gullible fish, like Noam Chomsky, may have been hooked,
but the vast majority of explicit deniers are motivated simply by hatred
of Jews. Second, Lipstadt fears that in today's intellectual climate of
deconstruction, where it is a campus game to overturn established truth
and values, Holocaust-denial is finding a receptive audience among young
people.
If the second point is valid, and I fear that it is, Lipstadt has
produced an effective antidote. By simply tracing the origins and spread
of denial-theory and its endless manifestations, she provides the best
possible refutation of its conclusions by demonstrating, with names,
dates and quotations, that it has from start to finish been inextricably
associated with extremists of the vilest kind. She shows that the
arguments of the deniers, when they are specifically formulated, have no
scientific or historical basis. The book is particularly useful in
demolishing the Zyklon-B and Anne Frank versions of the slander. It is,
in fact, an essential text that journalists and teachers ought to have
handy whenever this form of antisemitism makes its appearance.
Some will question Lipstadt's wisdom in dealing with the subject at
such length, thereby giving it further publicity. They are mistaken.
There are really only two effective ways of dealing with blatant
antisemitism. One is the use of the law: Lipstadt shows that specific
statutes have been employed both in Europe and Canada to expose and
combat Holocaust-deniers, and that even in the United States, where
freedom of speech, however outrageous, is zealously protected by the
First Amendment, litigation was successfully conducted against the IHR.
These court cases are most instructive. Although, as Lipstadt says, a
law court is not the ideal arena for establishing historical truth, it
is an objective forum whose findings are generally accepted by the
public, and in every case where the reality of the Holocaust has been
tested there, it has eventually been vindicated.
Moreover, the fact that evidence of the Holocaust has been
successfully validated in the courts makes it easier to pursue the
second method of dealing with the plague: to destroy its intellectual
respectability. In the long run, the only way to eradicate antisemitism
is to make it impossible for any politician, journalist, writer or
academic who holds antisemitic views, including Holocaust-denial, to be
taken seriously. We have come a long way since 1945 in attaining this
objective, and in the end we shall get there. Lipstadt's book is an
important step forward because it means that, henceforth, any opinion-
former who tries to deal in this particular antisemitic coin can easily
be shown to be using false currency.
Paul Johnson is a British historian whose books include "A History of
the Jews" and "Modern Times: The World from the 1920s to the 1990s."
@CAPTION: Some of the dead prisoners found by the U.S. Seventh Army
at Dachau.
STORY ID: 0000021792NYT
Girls' works in Holocaust Museum
NEW YORK TIMES: PAGE WC-4 (NYTI) 05/09/93
Copyright (c) 1993 UMI, New York Times Abstracts
By Ina Aronow
The special contribution made by three fifth-grade girls from
Mount Kisco NY to the US Holocaust Museum in Washington DC is
featured. The girls' handwriting and artwork are part of the
display "Daniel's Diary: Remember the Children," which recreates
the life of a boy who endured the Holocaust.
STORY ID: 0000016733NYT
Making art of the Holocaust: New museum, new works
NEW YORK TIMES: PAGE A-1 (NYTI) 04/23/93
Copyright (c) 1993 UMI, New York Times Abstracts
By Michael Kimmelman
The challenge put to artists involved in the US Holocaust
Museum, which opens to the public on Apr 26, 1993, to evoke in
their forms some of the difficult issues at hand is discussed. The
aesthetic difficulties posed to artists dealing with topic matter
relating to the Holocaust are examined.
STORY ID: 0000016040NYT
The misguided Holocaust Museum
NEW YORK TIMES: PAGE 4-19 (NYTI) 04/18/93
Copyright (c) 1993 UMI, New York Times Abstracts
By Jonathan Rosen
Jonathan Rosen discusses his criticisms of the new US Holocaust
Museum in Washington DC, asserting that the museum's mission of
creating a universal symbol of suffering available for American
adaptation may serve to distort the history of the Holocaust.
STORY ID: 0000009676NYT
ork
NEW YORK TIMES: PAGE LI-8 (NYTI) 02/14/93
Copyright (c) 1993 UMI, New York Times Abstracts
By Lisa Beth Pulitzer
The Nassau County Holocaust Commission has requested permission
to lease and renovate Welwyn, a 96-year-old Georgian-style mansion
on the Welwyn Preserve, to use as a home for the Nassau County
Holocaust Memorial and Education Center.
STORY ID: 0000071354WP
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR:
A Warning, Not a Shrine
WASHINGTON POST: EDITORIAL, 07/14/93
Copyright (c) 1993 The Washington Post Co.
008 Let me get this straight: A group of Jehovah's Witnesses visit the
Holocaust Memorial and object to an exhibit that groups them with
political dissidents and homosexuals ["Tourists in the Hall of Horror,"
Style, July 2]? Isn't this religious minority seeking to marginalize two
other minorities in a memorial to marginalized groups? And they spent
hours there and found it "faith-strengthening," but said they would
throw out of their congregation anyone "like that"?
I think this group needs a few more hours of the Holocaust to find
the meaning of what can happen when groups are singled out as "different.
" The memorial is not a shrine to Witnesses, it is a warning of what
man's inhumanity to man can culminate in when ignorance and hatred are
allowed to fester.
TOM MYERSWashington
STORY ID: 0000064011WP
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR:
The Holocaust and American Culture
WASHINGTON POST: EDITORIAL, 05/04/93
Copyright (c) 1993 The Washington Post Co.
008 In an April 20 Style article on the whys and why nots of building
the Holocaust Museum, Henry Allen quoted literary critic Alfred Kazin as
saying, "I don't think the Holocaust is part of American culture." I
understand why he might think that, but I don't agree.
I never paid much attention to the Holocaust until a few years ago.
I had not been born at the time it occurred, and I didn't become a Jew
until 10 years ago. I had noticed my husband didn't seem to know much
about his family, but I thought it was just a lack of interest on his
part.
Then our son had to draw a family tree for Cub Scouts. My husband
didn't know the names of his grandparents or where they had lived. He
knew only about those few relatives who had come to New York before the
war, leaving most of their family in Poland. The next time we visited
his mother, I asked about her parents. She soon was sobbing as she told
about the nightmares she had for years in which her parents cried out to
her for help. I never asked again, and we know nothing beyond the names
of my son's great-grandparents.
My next experience with the Holocaust was when my husband's uncle
showed me the picture he carries in his wallet of a family he was trying
to bring to the United States during the war. As a new immigrant, he
didn't know the language or the rules and couldn't get the paperwork
through in time to save them. I think often of those faces -- a smiling
family with two children -- but I think more often of Uncle Manny's face
as he told of the guilt and grief he still feels 50 years later.
Perhaps the face that haunts me most, though, is my 10-year-old
son's when he realized what happened during the Holocaust and that it
happened to his family. "Why would someone do that?" he asked.
My family and I are Americans. We live with the effects of the
Holocaust, and our grandchildren will live with the effects of the
Holocaust.
It is indeed very much a part of American culture.
DEBORAH B. HIRSCHHORNLeonardtown, Md.
STORY ID: 0000062767WP
Visiting the Holocaust Museum
WASHINGTON POST: STYLE, 04/22/93
Copyright (c) 1993 The Washington Post Co.
008 What it is: The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, which will be
dedicated today and opens to the public on Mond
New mail on node LYNX from IN%"H-AMSTDY@UICVM.BITNET" "American Studies discuss
ion list" (23:06:50)ay, is a federally
chartered institution that memorializes victims of the Holocaust. It was
built with private funds on land donated by the federal government.
Location: Raoul Wallenberg Place (formerly 15th Street) near
Independence Avenue in Southwest Washington. The museum is next to the
Bureau of Engraving and Printing.
Admission: Free, but the museum will issue tickets with entrance
times. To get a ticket in advance from TicketMaster (432-SEAT), you must
pay $2.50. A limited number of same-day tickets will be available free
at the museum's box office. Groups of more than 10 people should contact
the museum scheduler at 202-488-0400. There are no more tickets to
today's dedication.
How to get there: The Smithsonian Metro station is one block from
the museum's 14th Street entrance. Public transportation is recommended.
Hours: 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. every day; closed Christmas Day.
Primary components: A permanent multimedia exhibition that tells the
story of the Holocaust; two galleries for temporary exhibitions (one of
them, "Daniel's Story: Remember the Children," will open Monday and will
be up indefinitely); the Hall of Knowledge, a computer-based learning
center; a Hall of Remembrance, the official memorial; and a Holocaust
Research Institute.
End of the articles you asked to display.
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=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 1993 15:04:00 CST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: The CIA on Auschwitz/Birkenau
[Date: 19 Jul 1993 15:33:06 -0400 (EDT)
[From: THOMPSON%ACAD.LVC.EDU%CARNEGIE.BITNET@uic.edu
[Subject: The CIA on Auschwitz/Birkenau
[To: holocaus%uicvm.bitnet@uchimvs1.uchicago.edu
F Y I: Under the date of February 1979, the Central Intelligence Agency
published the following material [serial #ST-79-10001]:
Dino A. Brugioni & Robert G. Poirier. THE HOLOCAUST REVISITED:
A RETROSPECTIVE ANALYSIS OF THE AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU EXTERMINATION
COMPLEX.
-- Warren Thompson
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 1993 15:47:00 CST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: More evidence of Auschwitz gassing
[Date: Mon, 19 Jul 93 16:11:30 -0400
[From: dzk%cs.brown.edu@uic.edu (Danny Keren)
[Message-Id: <9307192011.AA21759@cslab6b.cs.brown.edu>
[To: HOLOCAUS%UICVM.BITNET@brownvm.brown.edu
[Subject: Re: More evidence on Auschwitz gassings
Another excellent source is:
Auschwitz: Technique and operation of the gas chambers - J.C Pressac,
the Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, NY, 1989.
The (huge) book also contains numerous construction plans of the
gas chambers and the furnaces; one document even cites the shower
heads in the gas chamber of Krema III.
-Danny Keren.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 1993 09:09:00 CST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: Holocaust Museum
[Date: Mon, 19 Jul 1993 17:57:11 -0500 (EST)
[From: RUEDNBRG%NYUACF.BITNET@uic.edu
[Subject: Re: Holocaust Museum
[To: HOLOCAUS%UICVM.BITNET@uchimvs1.uchicago.edu
>Does anyone know a telephone number that one can call about getting
>to see the holocaust museum.
Call: 1-800-551-SEAT for a time-specific ticket to the museum.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Lucia Ruedenberg
New York University
Dept. of Performance Studies
Email: ruednbrg@ACFcluster.NYU.EDU
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 1993 08:53:00 CST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: Re: Job at Holocaust Museum
[Date: Mon, 19 Jul 1993 18:03 EST
[From: BERNIE1%vms.cis.pitt.edu@uic.edu
[Subject: Re: Job at Holocaust Museum
[To: HOLOCAUS%UICVM.BITNET@uga.cc.uga.edu
bl to Danny
Many thanks for your suggestion.
I will do my best to have faith. I normally have little faith and trust.
Isn't it strange that the Holocaust Museum doesn't answer its telpehone
when it rings?
Many thanks, once again.
Bernie Lieberman
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 1993 09:06:00 CST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: Impact of the Museum
[Date: Mon, 19 Jul 1993 18:56:43 -0600 (CST)
[Subject: impact of museum
[To: holocaus%uicvm.BITNET@uchimvs1.uchicago.edu
[From: IN%"H-AMSTDY@UICVM.BITNET" "American Studies discussion list"
19-JUL-19
93 15:53:01.07
>Date: Mon, 19 Jul 1993 09:42:55 -0500 (CDT)
>From: Paul G Kosidowski
>Subject: RE: Trauma and the Holocaust
>To: H-AMSTDY@uicvm
Jeff Finlay writes:
> I remember being in Jerusalem's Yad Vashem in July 1980 and being jarred by
> what I saw there...
[rest of material omitted]
This anecdote is interesting, and Jeff's reading of it is trenchant. One of
the "gimmicks" of the Washington museum is that each visitor gets a mock
ID card of one concentration camp inmate. At the end of the tour, the
visitor finds out whether his adopted inmate was killed or survived. An
imaginative way of "personalizing" history? Probably. But the writer
of the Harper's article couldn't help noticing lots of cards in the
trash cans around the mall after he left the museum.
--
Paul Kosidowski English--Modern Studies
pkosidow@csd4.csd.uwm.edu U of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
PO Box 413
Milwaukee, WI 53211
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 1993 12:46:00 CST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: Impact of the Holocaust Museum
[Date: Tue, 20 Jul 93 11:45 EDT
[To: HOLOCAUS%UICVM.BITNET@uga.cc.uga.edu
[From: "Kenneth.Waltzer" <21409MGR%msu.edu@uic.edu>
[Subject: Impact of the Museum
The Holocaust Museum has revised its procedure in giving out ID cards of
concentration camp inmates. When I was there on July 11, visitors to the
museum continued to receive inmate cards, with photo -- but the cards were NOT
to be updated at several points in the museum. Apparently, the method had
produced bottlenecks and crowding and prevented people from making their way
through the museum. The cards were now distributed with all information at
the outset of visitors' entrances into the museum. In our group of four
visitors, interestingly, we received 4 different cards, with all four
individuals having survived the events of the Holocaust. I wondered how the
individuals were identified to be put on such cards and what ratio of
survivors there were in the sample. My sense is that the Museum people made
a well-intended effort to personalize the events, to connect them with real
individuals and communities -- hence the cards, the Eishishook photographs,
the survivors videos at the close of the exhibit. But the cards turned out to
be problematic in several ways.
My sense, after now reading the Harpers article, is that it is a very
curious and misguided article and a poor guide to the Museum -- although it
does make some worthwhile points at the margins. COmpare the reaction of the
writer in Harpers with that of the writer in New Republic. Did they visit the
same place?
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 1993 14:08:00 CST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: Holocaust "games"?
[To: holocaus@uicvm
[From: Dr John Gillies
[Date: 20 Jul 93 17:57:16 GMT,BST
[Subject: Holocaust "games"?
Am I being overly squeamish - or just missing the point - when I say
that I was shocked by Paul Kosidowski's account of the Holocaust
Museum's "gimmick" of issuing each visitor with the mock ID of a camp
inmate - with the payoff being that you "get to find out" at the end
of your tour whether "your" inmate died or survived? If these IDs
refer to real persons and real fates (as Paul's account suggests
they do) - or even if they are fictional (with fate being decided by
lottery, as it were) - this strikes me as sick. Why do they
think people need to be titillated in this way in order to feel some
degree of emotional involvement? What else - does the museum sell a
Holocaust board-game for the kids, or a Nintendo version? I think
the fact that many of these ID cards end up in nearby trash cans is
significant - it's a sign that people are taking themselves at the
museum organisers' evaluation.
John Gillies
John Gillies
Department of Psychology
Adam Smith Building
University of Glasgow
Glasgow G12 8RT Tel: (0)41 339 8855 ext.5351
Scotland
johng@psy.glasgow.ac.uk
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 1993 14:22:00 CST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: Chomsky a denier?
[Date: Tue, 20 Jul 93 14:08:05 CDT
[From: BKELMSS
[To:
[Subject: Chomsky a denier?
In a recent posting of articles, there was a review by Paul Johnson of
Lipstadt's book _Denying the Holocaust_. In the review, Johnson implies
that Chomsky is among the deniers. I am aware of Chomsky's critiques
ofIsraeli actions and policies, but am unaware that Chomsky has denied
the holocaust. Can anyone help to clarify this issue? Marcus Smith
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 1993 15:36:00 CST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: Holocaust "games"?
[Date: Tue, 20 Jul 93 15:53:43 -0400
[From: aa824%cleveland.Freenet.Edu@uic.edu (Mark Ira Kaufman)
[To: HOLOCAUS%UICVM.BITNET@uga.cc.uga.edu
[Subject: Re: Holocaust "games"?
Dr John Gillies writes...
JG>Am I being overly squeamish - or just missing the point - when I say
JG>that I was shocked by Paul Kosidowski's account of the Holocaust
JG>Museum's "gimmick" of issuing each visitor with the mock ID of a camp
JG>inmate - with the payoff being that you "get to find out" at the end
JG>of your tour whether "your" inmate died or survived? If these IDs
JG>refer to real persons and real fates (as Paul's account suggests
JG>they do) - or even if they are fictional (with fate being decided by
JG>lottery, as it were) - this strikes me as sick. Why do they
JG>think people need to be titillated in this way in order to feel some
JG>degree of emotional involvement? What else - does the museum sell a
JG>Holocaust board-game for the kids, or a Nintendo version? I think
JG>the fact that many of these ID cards end up in nearby trash cans is
JG>significant - it's a sign that people are taking themselves at the
JG>museum organisers' evaluation.
JG>
JG>John Gillies
JG>
JG>
JG>John Gillies
JG>Department of Psychology
JG>Adam Smith Building
JG>University of Glasgow
JG>Glasgow G12 8RT Tel: (0)41 339 8855 ext.5351
JG>Scotland
JG> johng@psy.glasgow.ac.uk
I do not regard this practice as gimmicky at all. In fact, I
regard it as an invaluable device for bringing a tragedy like
the Holocaust into meaningful focus.
A number like six million is a numbing figure. When it comes
to six million deaths, the mind glazes over. What the ID can
do is to remind us that the only human reality that exists is
the individual. The ID tag brings into focus horror which is
more powerful than a mere number.
If the 'gimmick' inculcates into a museum visitor the horror,
the sheer terror of the Holocaust, it might be more effective
than any of the exhibits.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 1993 15:38:00 CST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: Chomsky a denier?
[Date: Tue, 20 Jul 93 21:46:24 +0100
[Message-Id: <9307202046.AA01590@monza.u-strasbg.fr>
[To: Holocaust List
[From: eytan%dpt-info.u-strasbg.fr@uic.edu (Michel Eytan, LILoL)
[X-Sender: me@ushs.u-strasbg.fr
[Subject: Re: Chomsky a denier?
>[Date: Tue, 20 Jul 93 14:08:05 CDT
>[From: BKELMSS
>[To:
>[Subject: Chomsky a denier?
>
>In a recent posting of articles, there was a review by Paul Johnson of
>Lipstadt's book _Denying the Holocaust_. In the review, Johnson implies
>that Chomsky is among the deniers. I am aware of Chomsky's critiques
>ofIsraeli actions and policies, but am unaware that Chomsky has denied
>the holocaust. Can anyone help to clarify this issue? Marcus Smith
He anyway staunchly supports(/ed?) Faurisson, one of the foremost deniers
and antisemites in France -- giving the most controverted and fallacious
reasons I ever heard for supporting a hate-monger.
--
Michel Eytan, Lab Info, Log & Lang eytan@dpt-info.u-strasbg.fr
Dpt Info, U Strasbourg II Vox: +33 88 41 74 29
22 rue Descartes, 67084 Strasbourg FR Fax: +33 88 41 74 40
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 1993 16:15:00 CST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: Holocaust "games"?
[Date: Tue, 20 Jul 93 13:08:05 PDT
[From: jfisher%netxwest.com@uic.edu (Jonathan Fisher)
[Message-Id: <9307202008.AA13270@wizard.netx.com>
[To: HOLOCAUS%UICVM.BITNET@uchimvs1.uchicago.edu
[Subject: Re: Holocaust "games"?
> Am I being overly squeamish - or just missing the point - when I say
> that I was shocked by Paul Kosidowski's account of the Holocaust
> Museum's "gimmick" of issuing each visitor with the mock ID of a camp
> inmate - with the payoff being that you "get to find out" at the end
> of your tour whether "your" inmate died or survived? If these IDs
> refer to real persons and real fates (as Paul's account suggests
> they do) - or even if they are fictional (with fate being decided by
> lottery, as it were) - this strikes me as sick. Why do they
> think people need to be titillated in this way in order to feel some
> degree of emotional involvement? What else - does the museum sell a
> Holocaust board-game for the kids, or a Nintendo version? I think
> the fact that many of these ID cards end up in nearby trash cans is
> significant - it's a sign that people are taking themselves at the
> museum organisers' evaluation.
Uh, I haven't been there but based on my reading, yes the ID that
you can _choose_ to get upon entering the museum is an ID of a
"real" person who was in one of the camps. You follow this person
as they go through the holocaust and it's not until the end where
you find out whether this person survived or not.
I, personally, find this to be a unique and extremely effective
technique of helping a person really feel what went on during
this period of time.
It certainly is not a "game" and, IMO, should in no way be
belittled by comparing it to a "board-game" or "Nintendo".
>
> John Gillies
Jonathan
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 1993 16:16:00 CST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: Chomsky a denier
[Date: Tue, 20 Jul 93 13:10:53 PDT
[From: jfisher%netxwest.com@uic.edu (Jonathan Fisher)
[Message-Id: <9307202010.AA13273@wizard.netx.com>
[To: HOLOCAUS%UICVM.BITNET@uchimvs1.uchicago.edu
[Subject: Re: Chomsky a denier?
> [Date: Tue, 20 Jul 93 14:08:05 CDT
> [From: BKELMSS
> [To:
> [Subject: Chomsky a denier?
>
> In a recent posting of articles, there was a review by Paul Johnson of
> Lipstadt's book _Denying the Holocaust_. In the review, Johnson implies
> that Chomsky is among the deniers. I am aware of Chomsky's critiques
> ofIsraeli actions and policies, but am unaware that Chomsky has denied
> the holocaust. Can anyone help to clarify this issue? Marcus Smith
>
>
I've recently had this conversation with a Chomsky admirer. And, he
(the admirer) claims unequivicably that in no way has Chomsky denied
the existence of the holocaust. Apparently, the confusion lies in that
Chomsky defended the right of speech (or something like that) of someone
who did deny the existence of the holocaust.
Hope that this snippet of a conversion on Chomsky helps out.
Jonathan
jfisher@netxwest.com
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 21 Jul 1993 08:47:00 CST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: re: Chomsky a denier?
[Date: Tue, 20 Jul 1993 17:11:04 +0000
[To: Holocaust List
[From: ranelson%ksuvm.ksu.edu@uic.edu
[X-Sender: ranelson@matt.ksu.ksu.edu
[Subject: Re: Chomsky a denier?
>[Date: Tue, 20 Jul 93 21:46:24 +0100
>[Message-Id: <9307202046.AA01590@monza.u-strasbg.fr>
>[To: Holocaust List
>[From: eytan%dpt-info.u-strasbg.fr@uic.edu (Michel Eytan, LILoL)
>[X-Sender: me@ushs.u-strasbg.fr
>[Subject: Re: Chomsky a denier?
>
>>[Date: Tue, 20 Jul 93 14:08:05 CDT
>>[From: BKELMSS
>>[To:
>>[Subject: Chomsky a denier?
>>
>>In a recent posting of articles, there was a review by Paul Johnson of
>>Lipstadt's book _Denying the Holocaust_. In the review, Johnson implies
>>that Chomsky is among the deniers. I am aware of Chomsky's critiques
>>ofIsraeli actions and policies, but am unaware that Chomsky has denied
>>the holocaust. Can anyone help to clarify this issue? Marcus Smith
>
>He anyway staunchly supports(/ed?) Faurisson, one of the foremost deniers
>and antisemites in France -- giving the most controverted and fallacious
>reasons I ever heard for supporting a hate-monger.
>--Michel Eytan, Lab Info, Log & Lang eytan@dpt-info.u-strasbg.fr
Regarding the above comments, I don't think the leap from Chomsky's support
for Professor Faurisson's right of free inquiry to actual denial of the
Holocaust can be made. Chomsky and other civil libertarians have been
denounced by the Anti-Defamation League and others for their absolutist
defense of free speech that Voltaire would be proud of. Study after study
show that courageous free thinkers such as Chomsky (who after all is human)
are in the minority-particularly when they are as informed and outspoken as
he is. Just because he defends Faurisson from those who attempt to impose a
spiral of silence does NOT mean that he endorses the French revisionist's
ideas. He may or may not; we don't really know as far as I can tell.
Chomsky may also be anti-Zionist (linked to his libertarian denunciations
of statism), but he is clearly no anti-semite. Ironically, the clumsy and
shabby treatment the French authorities have given Faurisson strictly on
the basis of his writings has only helped to undercut the case against him
through the sympathy it engenders. Similar lack of civility against David
Irving in his attempts to give lectures in Germany, Britain, Canada and the
U.S. hasn't so much hurt his credibility as it has his attackers. At
issue here is the fundamental flaw stemming from attempts to legislate
thought through so-called hate crimes regulations as they have in place in
France. Trying to stop revisionist inquiry this way by imperiously
refusing to engage in discussive intercourse is on its face
anti-intellectual. As a practical matter, legal injunctions, censoring of
literature, and use of state violence are not going to work as the
increasing successes of the Institute for Historical Review and other
revisionists demonstrate. This was also the case of the infamous Ernst
Zundel trials in Canada which largely backfired against those bringing
charges against him. We are not going to simply wish away those we may
disagree with by imperiously deriding their research as pseudo-academic
etc. and then complain when they get converts. The essential problem for
critics of the "deniers" and other revisionists holding a different world
view is that they have a case-there is a body of evidence on their side
that remains troubling. The unwillingness to debate on campus or the media
strikes many persons as "un-American," with the revisionists winning points
by stressing openess. A parallel can be made here to the failure of those
opposing Reagan conservativism to adequately understand the man and his
intellectual/social appeal. He was satirized, derided, and called names
all the way in the White House. The same may be happening here. Usually
the whole truth emerges out of the crucible of thesis/antithesis/synthesis.
As a propaganda scholar, I've found revisionist researchers have always
performed a useful service even when it is easy to disagree with them. As
radicals,they help define the outer limits of an issue and force those in
the center to be more thorough. When they are right, they help clarify
fact. And when they are wrong, their failures to displace the truths they
unsuccessfully challenged have made those renewed truths ever more precious
and secure. -- ranelson@ksuvm.ksu.edu
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 21 Jul 1993 09:05:00 CST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: re: Chomsky a denier?
[Date: Tue, 20 Jul 93 21:12:26 -0400
[From: dzk%cs.brown.edu@uic.edu (Danny Keren)
[Message-Id: <9307210112.AA22825@cslab6b.cs.brown.edu>
[To: HOLOCAUS%UICVM.BITNET@brownvm.brown.edu
[Subject: Re: Chomsky a denier?
Chomsky is absolutely and completely no Holocaust denier. What Johnson
was writing about is Chomsk'y refusal to agree that Holocaust deniers
are motivated by antisemitisim.
I know this for sure not only from reading Chomsky's essays but from an
e-mail correspondance I held with him. He does not doubt any of the accepted
facts of the Holocaust, and said he has seen nothing that will cause him
to doubt what "authentic Holocaust historians such as Hilberg and Bower"
write: that the Nazis killed over 5 million Jews, a great percentage of them
in gas chambers.
-Danny Keren.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 21 Jul 1993 09:07:00 CST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: re: Holocaust "games"?
[From: RUEDNBRG%NYUACF.BITNET@uic.edu
[Subject: Re: Holocaust "games"?
[To: HOLOCAUS%UICVM.BITNET@uchimvs1.uchicago.edu
>[Date: Tue, 20 Jul 93 13:08:05 PDT
>[From: jfisher%netxwest.com@uic.edu (Jonathan Fisher)
>
>Uh, I haven't been there but based on my reading, yes the ID that
>you can _choose_ to get upon entering the museum is an ID of a
>"real" person who was in one of the camps. You follow this person
>as they go through the holocaust and it's not until the end where
>you find out whether this person survived or not.
You don't follow the person through the holocaust, as far as I could tell
when I went through the exhibit. The card that is handed to you (you don't
have to take it) simply describes the life and fate of an individual.
That is the extent of it at this point.
>I, personally, find this to be a unique and extremely effective
>technique of helping a person really feel what went on during
>this period of time.
WEll, not really, although that was the original idea perhaps. I visited
the museum with a group of survivors and observed them as they interacted
with the exhibit and visitors. It was very moving to watch and many visitors
were surprised and moved to be able to talk to somebody standing next to
them who had witnessed and experienced what was being exhibited.
The most effective way to 'feel' anything about the Holocaust is to speak to
survivors because it is human interaction that leaves the strongest impact
upon us. They are an aging population, true, but there are still many of them,
more willing to speak today than before. At the end of the exhibit there
are video testimonies by survivors but still...look and listen around you
to the people if and when you visit the museum...
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Lucia Ruedenberg
New York University
Dept. of Performance Studies
Email: ruednbrg@ACFcluster.NYU.EDU
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 21 Jul 1993 09:08:00 CST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: re: Chomsky a denier?
[Date: Tue, 20 Jul 93 21:16:42 -0400
[From: dzk%cs.brown.edu@uic.edu (Danny Keren)
[Message-Id: <9307210116.AA22829@cslab6b.cs.brown.edu>
[To: HOLOCAUS%UICVM.BITNET@brownvm.brown.edu
[Subject: Re: Chomsky a denier?
True, Chomsky supported Faurisson's right to speak, but never his opinions.
I disagree with many things Chomsky says, but, as I wrote in my previous
messege, he is not a Holocaust denier.
-Danny Keren.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 21 Jul 1993 09:29:00 CST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: Courageous Chomsky???
[Date: Wed, 21 Jul 93 16:52 +0300
[From: RWERMAN%vms.huji.ac.il@uic.edu
[To: Holocaust List
[Subject: COURAGEOUS-CHOMSKY???
THE AUTHOR
Werner Cohn was born in Berlin and educated in New York. He currently
lives in Canada and is Professor Emeritus of Sociology, University of British
Columbia. His research interests have included the sociology of Jews, small
political movements, and the relationship between these two.
Design and layout by Frances Besner Newman
Copyright m 1988 by Werner Cohn
The Hidden Alliances of Noam Chomsky
By Werner Cohn
Everyone knows Noam Chomsky of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology for his linguistics and his left-wing politics. But the fact that
he also maintains important connections with the neo-Nazi movement of
our time-that he is, in a certain sense, the most important patron of that
movement-is well known only in France. Much like a bigamist who must
constantly strain to keep one of his families secret from the other,
Chomsky must try to keep his liberal and left-wing American public
ignorant of his other, his neo-Nazi following.
Chomsky has said that his contact with the neo-Nazis is strictly
limited to a defense of their freedom of speech. He has said that he
disagrees with the most important neo-Nazi article of f aith, viz. that the
Holocaust never happened. But such denials have not prevented him from
prolonged and varied political collaboration with the neo-Nazi movement,
from agreement with it on other key points, nor-and this has proven
essential for the neo-Nazis especially in France-from using his scholarly
reputation to promote and publicizc the neo-Nazi groups.
y was born in Philadelphia in 1928. He is the son of the noted
Hebraist William (Zev) Chomsky and was educated in the progressive
schools of his parents' milieu. Later, apparently because he was thought to
be exceptionally brilliant, he was awarded a bachelor's and even a Ph.D.
degree in linguistics without going through any required courses or
formalities. Today he is Institute Professor at MIT and author of numerous
and highly influential books on the nature of language. His work is
respected by scholars and admired by the public. It would be difficult to
find a more prestigious figure in American, or, for that matter, in
international academia.
But if we judge by the treatment he has received in the press, his
fame rests most of all on his involvement with the anti-Vietnam War
movement of the late 1960's and early 1970's. In the decade from 1966 to
1975 T~e Ne+v ~ov~ Tin7es ~wde~ mentioned him a total of ninety-five times,
eighty-two times for political activities and the rest for scholarly work.
Since 1976, Chomsky's public notoriety having noticeably declined, the
~nde~ awards him just twenty-one references, again mostly-in seventeen
cases-for his politics. But whether the news item deals with politics or
linguistics some reference is almost invariably made to Chomsky's
academic status and it seems doubtful that without it his politicking would
have been at all newsworthy.
I have tried to find references in T~e New ~ov~ Tiw~es to Chomsky's
neo-Nazi involvements and could find only two items, out of the over one
hundred devoted to him, that allude to this side of his activities. The story is
quite different in France where ~e Mowde and other publications regularly
refer to Chomsky's relationship to the French neo-Nazi propagandist
Robert Faurisson. But in America there is little to deflect the casual
observer from an impression of Chomsky as an eminently reasonable
academic who may, at the very worst, sometimes get a bit overly zealous in
his pursuit of the good (i.e. left wing) society.
One characteristic of Chomsky's political writings that does raise
immediate questions about his judgment is his obvious animus toward the
United States and Israel. He occasionally says bad things about most of the
governments of the world but it is Israel and the United States for which he
reserves his extraordinary vitriol. Chomsky is careful not to justify Hitler
explicitly but his writings create the impression that the Nazis could not
have been any worse than the "war criminals" of the United States and
Israel today. Moreover, and this is indeed curious, almost all references to
Nazis in his books turn out to be denunciations of Nazi- like behavior on
the part of Israelis.
But it is well known that Chomsky is Jewish and his anti-Israel
stance, when not examined closely enough to reveal its radically
malevolent kernel, is sometimes considered as a liberal Jew's way of
leaning over backward to be fair to the other side. As for the anti-
Americanism, well, that is surely something quite in vogue ...
Chomsky's writings are often praised by his admirers as packed with
"facts." And indeed there are many footnotes and many references to
apparently esoteric pieces of information. But I have found that these
references, at least those that deal with crucial points, simply do not check
out. Sometimes the source is impossible to track down, sometimes it is
completely misquoted, very often it is so patently and completely biased
that no responsible scholar could have taken it at face value. Later in this
essay I shall demonstrate these problems by examining Chomsky's
treatment of two important episodes in the history of Israel. In regard to
Chomsky's treatment of U.S. foreign policy, Stephen Morris has already
demonstrated Chomsky's sleight-ofhand methods.'
But despite all this-despite his strident left-wing politics, his bitter
anti-Israel activism, his disreputable scholarship on matters political-
Chomsky's prestige in wide circles of educated America remains high.
Whether that prestige will survive wider knowledge of his neo-Nazi
connections remains to be seen.
2 CHOMSKY AND THE NEO-NAZIS
The name Robert Faurisson represents the most obvious (but not the
most significant) connection between Chomsky and the neo-Nazis.
Faurisson is a French hate-filled crank, a one-time lecturer in literature at
the University of Lyon, right-wing, deeply anti-Semitic."
Faurisson says that he is proud that his writings are distributed by
partisans of both the left (~~ Viei~~e ~~~~e) and the right wing (O~wzios).
The fact is that, in each case, it is a matter of tiny sectarian groupings.
O~w7ios is a
Parisian bookstore-cum-movement that belongs to the antiSemitic, anti-
foreign, extreme right wing of the French political spectrum. It is reported
to have received financial aid from the government of Iran." Far more
important to Faurisson is ~~ Viei~~e T~~~e under the leadership of Pierre
Guillaume, a small group of self-styled leftists who publish Faurisson's
booklets and pamphlets, advertise them, publicize them, propagandize for
them. It is they who are the friends of Chomsky, and it is through them that
Chomsky was brought into close association with the neo-Nazi movement.
(At the time of this writing, Ogmios and La Vieille Taupe have joined forces
to publish a new
antiSemitic review, Awwa~es d~is~oive Revisiowwis~e.)
Since the 1 960's, Faurisson says, he has devoted innumerable hours
to what he considers a very deep study of the fate of the Jews during the
Second World War. He has written some books and articles on the subject
and summarizes his "findings" as follows:
The alleged Hitlerite gas chambers and the alleged genocide of the Jews
form one and the same historical lie, which opened the way to a gigantic
political-financial swindle, the principal beneficiaries of which are the
State of Israel and international Zionism, and the principal victims of
which are the German people-but not its leaders-and the entire Palestinian
peo and his associates on both sideir "revisionism. ' They urge, and I cannot
disagree, that fair-minded persons in free countries must keep open minds
when confronted with reasonable or at least reasoned challenges to
conventional wisdom. In theory all received truth can and must be
constantly re-examined in the light of new evidence, and we should be
thankful to scholars and other reasonable men when they can confront us
with thoughtful skepticism. But when, on the other hand, an outrageous
point is advanced without regard for its truthfulness or for any rule of
logic or evidence, when it is made simply to injure and defame, in that
case, surely, we are justified in being less than respectful to the would-be
"revisionist."
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 21 Jul 1993 14:12:00 EST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: comparing genocides [forwarded from History]
[Date: Wed, 21 Jul 1993 11:00:12 CDT
[Reply-To: History Discussion Forum
[Sender: History Discussion Forum
[From: stan kulikowski ii
[Subject: comparing genocides
in "Jim May" says
>>
>> The United States did not participate in the destruction of Jewish
>> culture in Europe. It DID participate in the destruction of whole
>> Indian populations and cultures by the millions.
>>
i don't think it is so clear that the US did not participate at least
indirectly in the jewish holocaust in europe. before the closing of the
american frontier in 1890, opressed peoples from europe often migrated in
large quantities to avoid political pressures. a similar eugenics
movement which eventually came up with 'the final solution' in germany
also set up the immigration quota system in the USA. the founders of
american intelligence testing (goddard, terman, and others) used results
of the army's beta IQ test (for illiterates) to show that many races
coming in through ellis island were undesireable and should be strictly
limited by quota. european jews were among these and so had no where to
go when the fascists increased their intolerance.
our hands were not so clean. our concentration camps of japanese
citizens could have turned into eugenics death factories if we had started
losing the war. we had all the same intellective seeds that the germans
had at the same time. eugenics was an acceptable intellectual endeavor on
both sides of the atlantic until the closing of WW2 and the horror of the
concentration camps was abruptly exposed.
>>
>> Yet the US has provided a Holocaust Museum as a memorial to the
>> European catastrophe. Although Israel's Jewish population and
>> that of the American Indians are comparable in size, only an
>> insignificant fraction of the hundreds of billions sent to Israel
>> since the Second World War has gone to help the American Indian.
>>
another problem in the differential response to jewish exterminations
compared to northern native americans is that of history. historical
sources are primarily composed of textual materials with artifactual
evidence secondary. much of the familiar jewish prehistory was apparently
manufactured during the babylonian captivity (6th c BCE) when the exiles
from canaan became literate, monotheistic and began calling themselves
'jewish'. from that point on (the kingship of hezekiah, i am told) we
have an accurate, verifiable history of that culture. it is easy to
incorporate such history in our curriculum (which biblical culture has
been doing for the centuries since).
a 'history' of native northern americans is problematic. there is only
artifactual evidence, oral traditions, and secondary text produced by the
invaders. now that we have a 70% translation on the mayan syllabary, we
can do a little better with native central american cultures. but
producing a history curriculum for nonliterate cultures has to rely on
different kinds of information sources which are harder to verify, teach,
and understand. if the distant past does speak for itself in its own
words, then we are left mainly with contemporary beliefs and politics in
the place of a history.
understanding a culture through its history is vastly different than
understanding it through archeology and politics. the body counts may be
very similar in the jewish and native american genocides, but the cultural
processes involved are radically different. we should not expect similar
levels of understanding or response.
stan
. stankuli@UWF.bitnet
=== life is a tragedy to those who feel,
: : and a comedy for those who think.
--- -- jean delabruyere
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 21 Jul 1993 14:14:00 EST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: Impact of Museum
[Subject: Impact of the Holocaust Museum
[From: ray.normandeau@factory.com (Ray Normandeau)
[Date: Tue, 20 Jul 93 19:17:00
-> The Holocaust Museum has revised its procedure in giving out ID cards
-> of concentration camp inmates. When I was there on July 11, visitors
-> to the museum continued to receive inmate cards, with photo -- but
-> the cards were NOT to be updated at several points in the museum.
-> Apparently, the method had produced bottlenecks and crowding and
-> prevented people from making their way through the museum. The cards
-> were now distributed with all information at the outset of visitors'
-> entrances into the museum. In our group of four
People could have been speeded up by getting updated only after leaving
the museun.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 21 Jul 1993 15:44:00 EST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: RE: Holocaust "games"?
[Date: Tue, 20 Jul 1993 22:36:03 EDT
[From: BERMAN
[To: HOLOCAUS%UICVM.BITNET@uchimvs1.uchicago.edu
[Message-Id: <0096FCD6.B7D9BEE0.31534@mars.senecac.on.ca>
[Subject: RE: Holocaust "games"?
I think that there are other, perhaps better, ways to express the
individuality of the victims of the Holocaust. I think that Yad Vashem
does it very well. I don't think these cards (from what I have read on
this network) are appropriate. Do they become collectors items? How many
are there in total? Do we trade doubles? I'm sorry, it sounds more and more
like this museum is more of a tourist attraction than a memorial...
HAL BERMAN
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 21 Jul 1993 16:37:00 EST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: ID cards
[To: holocaus@uicvm
[From: Dr John Gillies
[Date: 21 Jul 93 10:18:50 GMT,BST
[Subject: ID cards
I certainly accept that the intention of the Holocaust Museum
organisers in issuing "ID cards" is good - that they wish to
"personalise" the experience for visitors - and I agree that a
statistic like 6 million dead is difficult to grasp - but surely there
is something in between the "bald" presentation of statistics and the
ID card "gimmick" (the expression wasn't mine, incidentally)?
The Museum must surely be full of photographs and other materials
which bring home the personal nature of the Holocaust?
I shouldn't go on with this, perhaps, since I haven't visited the
Museum, but I have visited Auschwitz and found the museum there
made such a profound impression because the sense of the scale of the
devastation *was* coupled with the sense of the victims as individual
human beings. I'm afraid I still think I would have been shocked to
have been handed an ID card for this curious "lottery game".
John Gillies
Department of Psychology
Adam Smith Building
University of Glasgow
Glasgow G12 8RT Tel: (0)41 339 8855 ext.5351
Scotland
johng@psy.glasgow.ac.uk
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 21 Jul 1993 16:38:00 EST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: Re: Holocaust "games"?
[Date: Wed, 21 Jul 93 13:25:15 +0100
[From: pl2@ukc.ac.uk
[To: JIMMOTT@spss.com
[Subject: Re: Holocaust "games"?
I entirely agree with John Gilies the practice of handing out fake or
real ID cards is sick and the museum ought to stop doing it.
Peter Lindley
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 21 Jul 1993 17:06:00 EST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: re: Holocaust "games"?
[Subject: Re: Holocaust "games"?
[To: HOLOCAUS%UICVM.BITNET@ricevm1.rice.edu
[Date: Wed, 21 Jul 93 15:37:17 CDT
[From: rbook%rice.edu@uic.edu (Robert A. Book)
> JG>Am I being overly squeamish - or just missing the point - when I say
> JG>that I was shocked by Paul Kosidowski's account of the Holocaust
> JG>Museum's "gimmick" of issuing each visitor with the mock ID of a camp
> JG>inmate - with the payoff being that you "get to find out" at the end
> JG>of your tour whether "your" inmate died or survived? If these IDs
> JG>refer to real persons and real fates (as Paul's account suggests
> JG>they do)
They do refer to real people.
> I do not regard this practice as gimmicky at all. In fact, I
> regard it as an invaluable device for bringing a tragedy like
> the Holocaust into meaningful focus.
>
> A number like six million is a numbing figure. When it comes
> to six million deaths, the mind glazes over. What the ID can
> do is to remind us that the only human reality that exists is
> the individual. The ID tag brings into focus horror which is
> more powerful than a mere number.
Since the cards also describe the pre-war background of the person,
they also give an interesting insight into the live of European Jews
before the war.
--Robert Book
rbook@rice.edu
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1993 08:55:00 EST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: Chomsky
[Date: Wed, 21 Jul 1993 16:43:03 -0400 (EDT)
[From: HANFTS%conrad.appstate.edu@uic.edu
[Subject: Chomsky
[To: HOLOCAUS%UICVM.BITNET@vtvm2.cc.vt.edu
Since Karen and others are in contact with Chomsky, could he not be asked
some straightforward questions:
Does he consider himself Jewish?
Does he accept as fact, the existance of the Holocaust (the Nazis attempt yo
systematically destroy Jews & others in concentration/death camps) which
included the annihilation of 5-6 million Jews and a similar number of
non-combatants who were not Jewish--as described by Hilberg & others?
What is the issue as he perceives it, for his defense of french denialists?
Why does he believe that Israel, of all middle eastern nations, is deserving
of the vast amount of criticism he expends on it without similar criticisms
of Syria and other non-Jewish middle eastern nations?
I think it would be curtious, if not illuminating, to invite Mr. Chomsky to
speak for himself. It would be easiesxt for one of his friends on this Net
speak for himself. It would be easiest for one of his friends on this Net
to convey the invitation.
Sheldon Hanft
History Dept
Appalachian State Univ., Boone NC
Hanfts@APPSTATE.edu
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1993 08:56:00 EST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: Museum Address
[From: SMTP%"rlockyea%tecnet1.jcte.jcs.mil@uic.edu" 21-JUL-1993 16:21:15.63
[To: holocaus@uicvm.uic.edu
[Subj: Museum Address?
Can anyone give me the address and telephone number of the holocaust
museum in El Paso, Texas?
Bob
rlockyea@tecnet1.jcte.jcs.mil
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1993 08:58:00 EST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: RE: Holocaust "games"?
[Date: Wed, 21 Jul 93 17:20 EDT
[To: HOLOCAUS%UICVM.BITNET@uga.cc.uga.edu
[From: "Kenneth.Waltzer" <21409MGR%msu.edu@uic.edu>
[Subject: RE: Holocaust "games"?
It is discouraging reading sniping comments about this or that practice of the
Holocaust Museum by people who have not visited the museum and who have not
read widely or broadly about the museum. The Holocaust Museum is not a "game
park" or a "tourist attraction." It is a serious undertaking which puts a
lot of information before those visiting it in multiple ways and impresses on
nearly all those who go through it the gravity and weight of the events it
describes. When I was there July 11, a Saturday, it was packed with people;
yet one could hear only whispers in the packed corridors (the corridors are
narrow, with exhibits on both sides). I spent over four hours going through,
and I continued to see many (not all) of the same people who lined up for
entrance going through at a similar, involved pace. There is no
trivialization of the subject involved here -- the Museum is serious,
substantial, professional. People are subdued, pensive, moved to horror and
compassion. Many hold hands . . . .
The issue of the cards is a peripheral one. A well intentioned effort,
the Museum has retreated one step already. I wouldn't be surprised to see
further revision, even dropping the cards. The Museum Gift Shop perhaps will
raise other questions for some -- but it makes available to visitors a full
range of reading materials (scholarly works, memoirs, children's books) on the
Holocaust. There is a book on the Museum itself, which reproduces the
Museum's narrative of the Holocaust. There are many ways for people on this
network to become more fully informed and in a balanced way than by taking
their bearings from the misguided Gourevitch article that appeared in Harpers.
There are legitimate big questions about the museum's narrative, its meaning,
its place on the mall --even its effectiveness. I was hoping people on this
network would address the big questions . . . .
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1993 09:38:00 EST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: re: ID cards
[Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1993 00:06:54 -0500 (EST)
[From: RUEDNBRG%NYUACF.BITNET@uic.edu
[Subject: Re: ID cards
[To: HOLOCAUS%UICVM.BITNET@uchimvs1.uchicago.edu
>[From: Dr John Gillies
>[Date: 21 Jul 93 10:18:50 GMT,BST
>Museum, but I have visited Auschwitz and found the museum there
>made such a profound impression because the sense of the scale of the
>devastation *was* coupled with the sense of the victims as individual
>human beings. I'm afraid I still think I would have been shocked to
ahh...but Auschwitz (and other camps) have what no 'museum' can ever
have - authenticity of place and the power this has on the imagination
of the individual visitor/tourist.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Lucia Ruedenberg
New York University
Dept. of Performance Studies
Email: ruednbrg@ACFcluster.NYU.EDU
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1993 09:42:00 EST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: re: Holocaust "games"?
[To: HOLOCAUS%UICVM.BITNET@uga.cc.uga.edu
[From: "Grant Kaufmann"
[Date: 22 Jul 93 10:56:47 SAT-2
[Subject: re: Holocaust "games"?
I was in the museum 2 days before it was opened to the public, and I
thought that the ID cards improved the effect of the experience. I
suppose that the fact that there were few people and a chance to
quietly reflect on what the card said was available must have helped,
but I can see that people who are apathetic to the holocaust
(and just apathetic in general would describe half the American
population) would find the cards wasteful and pointless. The
whole experience is what you make of it; it's a great idea, and if it
can be funded, what's the problem?
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1993 11:53:00 EST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: Impact of Museum
[Date: Wed, 21 Jul 93 20:20:09 CDT
[From: BKELMSS
[To:
[Subject: Impact of Museum
I have not yet visited the H. museum, but I find the discussion of the
identity cards slightly eery--especially the issue of processing speed.
Marcus Smith
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1993 11:55:00 EST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: re: Chomsky a denier?
[Date: Wed, 21 Jul 93 20:37:48 CDT
[From: BKELMSS
[To:
[Subject: re: Chomsky a denier?
A note to Danny Keren: I wonder if you should forward the recent discuss
ion to Chomsky and invite him to respond. He's a mighty busy guy, but
this is a very tense question. Marcus Smith
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1993 11:57:00 EST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: re: Chomsky
[Date: Thu, 22 Jul 93 10:19:59 -0400
[From: dzk%cs.brown.edu@uic.edu (Danny Keren)
[Message-Id: <9307221419.AA23771@cslab6b.cs.brown.edu>
[To: HOLOCAUS%UICVM.BITNET@brownvm.brown.edu
[Subject: Re: Chomsky
Sheldon Hanft wrote:
# Since Karen and others are in contact with Chomsky, could he not be asked
# some straightforward questions:
(Questions deleted)
I assume the "Karen" reference is to me, and apologize if I am wrong.
Firstly, I am not "in contact with Chomsky", neither professionally nor
personally (my field is computer science and applied math). My only
contact with him was a series of e-mails regarding his stance re
Holocaust denial. I do not feel it is my right to start bombarding
him with personal questions.
As Prof. Chomsky agreed I make his comments public (since at the time
there was an ongoing debate about his opinions on USENET) here is the
relevant excerpt from his letter:
---------------------------------------------------------------
My views are quite explicitly stated: the Holocaust was the most
extreme atrocity in human history, and we lose our humanity if we
are even willing to enter the arena of debate with those who seek
to deny or underplay Nazi crimes.
[Speaking about works of Faurisson etc.]:
Answer: I have not read them, and do not know what they claim,
but have seen no reason to doubt the conclusions of authentic
Holocaust historians (Hilberg, Bauer, etc.) on the facts of the matter.
---------------------------------------------------------------
-Danny Keren.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1993 12:32:00 EST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: Job alert: Holocaust center in Miami
Job Opening:
History: Holocaust/Oral History/Modern European, Jewish or
German history. Director of Documentation, one-year renewable
appointment beginning October 30, 1993. Ph.D. in history or
related field required; prior teaching and scholarly
publication preferred; knowledge of European languages and
oral history experience helpful. Appointee will be expected to
oversee all aspects of ongoing Holocaust oral history program,
including interviewer training, tape copyright, preservation
and transcription and grant writing. Salary commensurate with
qualifications and experience. Applications and credentials
should be sent by October 1, 1993, to Rositta E. Kenigsberg,
Executive Director, Holocaust Documentation and Education
Center, Incorporated, Florida International University, 3000
N.E. 145 Street, Miami, Florida 33181-3600. AA/EOE.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1993 15:34:00 EST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: Re: Courageous Chomsky???
[Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1993 09:02 EST
[From: BERNIE1%vms.cis.pitt.edu@uic.edu
[Subject: Re: Courageous Chomsky???
[To: HOLOCAUS%UICVM.BITNET@uga.cc.uga.edu
I want to thank the person who posted the piece by Werner Cohn. It is
certainly a service to me.
I was aware of Chomsky's genuine intellectual accomplishments respected him
for that. I also respected him for his opposition to the Vietnam war. I and
many others were late in seeing the foolishness and harms of our Vietnam
inolvement. Chomsky and others did our society a great favor by their
opposition.
But I was always made uneasy by his statements about the US and Israel,
and by his defense of those who deny. All these matters can be justified
by noble principles but I felt that if someone had noble principles they
would manifest themselves in other actions about Israel and the Holocaust.
One can criticize Israel as Abba Eban has done for decades without appearing
to be "anti-Israel." One can defend free speech without appearing to be
"pro-denial." Chomsky's behavior puzzled me. Where was the sympathy for
the difficulties of the Israelis. Where was the condemenation of the
those who deny. Chomsky was an enigma to me.
Now with Cohn's piece to study we at least have an hypothesis about the
"strange behavior of Noam Chomsky."
Can someone tell Chomsky of the discussions here. He should have a chance
to answer Cohn.
I doubt that he will. If Cohn is correct he maintains his status by
obscuring his activities in France.
LET US THANK COHN FOR HIS ANALYSIS BUT LET US NOT CONSIDER CHOMSKY
GUILTY OF THE CRIMES COHN LISTS UNTIL WE HEAR HIS DEFENSE.
Thanks again for Cohn's piece.
Bernie Lieberman
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1993 15:36:00 EST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: Chomsky
[From: "Mayerson, Marc L&S"
[To: HOLOCAUS%UICVM.BITNET@uchimvs1.uchicago.edu
[Subject: Chomsky
[Date: Thu, 22 Jul 93 08:06:00 PDT
RE: Sheldon Hanft's questions for Chomsky.
I really don't see the point of this inquisition, polite as it may be.
Personally, I don't care what Noam Chomsky thinks one way or the other, no
more than what I care what Marlon Brando or Charlton Heston thinks about the
subject. His expertise is in linguistics, is it not? Better we should quiz
him about the role of dental fricative prepositions in ancient Teutonic
languages.
--marc mayerson
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1993 15:37:00 EST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: re: Chomsky
[To: Holocaust List
[Subject: Re: Chomsky
[Date: Thu, 22 Jul 93 10:22:16 MDT
[From: Jeff Finger
Chomsky no doubt is connected to Internet himself. But would he have any
interest in addressing this forum? Probably not. It would make no sense
for him to do so.
-- Itzhak "Jeff" Finger --
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1993 15:39:00 EST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: Re: Museum Address
[Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1993 13:40:20 -0500 (EST)
[From: RUEDNBRG%NYUACF.BITNET@uic.edu
[Subject: Re: Museum Address
[To: HOLOCAUS%UICVM.BITNET@uchimvs1.uchicago.edu
>[From: SMTP%"rlockyea%tecnet1.jcte.jcs.mil@uic.edu" 21-JUL-1993 16:21:15.63
>[To: holocaus@uicvm.uic.edu
>
>Can anyone give me the address and telephone number of the holocaust
>museum in El Paso, Texas?
El Paso Holocaust Museum and Study Center
405 Wallenberg Drive
El Paso, TX 79912
915 584-4437
Mon-Fri 10am-3pm
btw: a good directory of Holocaust centers is published by the Holocaust
Resource Center at Queensborough Community College, CUNY, Bayside, NY 11364
718-225-0378 (and updated annually)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Lucia Ruedenberg
New York University
Dept. of Performance Studies
Email: ruednbrg@ACFcluster.NYU.EDU
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1993 15:40:00 EST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: Re: Impact of Museum
[Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1993 13:53:51 -0500 (EST)
[From: RUEDNBRG%NYUACF.BITNET@uic.edu
[Subject: Re: Impact of Museum
[To: HOLOCAUS%UICVM.BITNET@uchimvs1.uchicago.edu
>[Date: Wed, 21 Jul 93 20:20:09 CDT
>[From: BKELMSS
>[To:
>I have not yet visited the H. museum, but I find the discussion of the
>identity cards slightly eery--especially the issue of processing speed.
As Kenneth Waltzer just pointed out, it is really striking how it is
those who have NOT been to the museum that are getting all bent out of
shape over this peripheral issue.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Lucia Ruedenberg
New York University
Dept. of Performance Studies
Email: ruednbrg@ACFcluster.NYU.EDU
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1993 15:42:00 EST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: re: Chomsky
[Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1993 16:12 EST
[From: BERNIE1%vms.cis.pitt.edu@uic.edu
[Subject: Re: Chomsky
[To: HOLOCAUS%UICVM.BITNET@uga.cc.uga.edu
B. Lieberman to Danny Keren
Can you give us Noam Chomsky's email address.
Since you have chosen to present his words to us and you now say that
you do not want to "presume" any further perhaps you will let some of us
do the presuming.
Chomsky's statements make me uncomfortable. Those are just the words I
would use if werner Cohns accusations were true. I would say the Holocaust
is an historical fact and I don't know what Faurisson wrote but I defend his
right to say it.
I'll tell you what doesn't smell right to me.
If I were defending an unpopular position I would read the words of
that position. I would criticize the position severely and if I thought
it was despicable I would say so. But I would say that freedom of expression
is my over-riding value and I defend people's right to say whatever they
wish. But I would certainly know what I am defending.
That position is not just an abstract principle with me. I do act on it.
I am involved with attempts to limit alcoholic beverage advertising. I
am opposed to any limits on the advertising of alcoholic beverages. At the
same time I think alcoholic beverage advertising that encourages young
people to drink ---- that makes drinking seem glamorous --- is dangerous,
and undesirable. But I think we must defend the freedom of commercial
speech as we defend the freedom of political speech.
speech as we defend the freedom of political speech.
So as of now Werner Cohn's accusations stand. And anyone with political
sophistication knows that accusations not answered are damming.
I am made very uneasy by the statement of Chomsky that he doesn't know
what Faurisson has written. A person who is so responsible that he takes
up the cudgels for the freedom of expression of someone in another country
certainly is irresponsible if he doesn't know what that person wrote. So
as of now I must say that the best we can say for chomsky on this issue is
that he is irresponsible. The worst we can believe is that Werner Cohn's
accusations are true.
Let us hear from Mr. Chomsky himself.
I am an old Jew myself. I always assumed that someone with a name like
Chomsky was Jewish.
Aare we all being terribly unfair to Professor Chomsky or is Werner Cohn
correct?
Pray tell
Bernie Lieberman
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1993 15:45:00 EST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: Re: Courageous Chomsky???
[Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1993 16:33 EST
[From: BERNIE1%vms.cis.pitt.edu@uic.edu
[Subject: Re: Courageous Chomsky???
[To: HOLOCAUS%UICVM.BITNET@uga.cc.uga.edu
Let us look carefully at Werner Cohn's accusations.
He said that Chomsky had "prolonged and varied collaboration with the
neo-nazi movement." But the only specific he cites is an association
with Pierre Guillaume.
Theefore let us ask for more information about the "prolonged and varied
collaborations" Specifically what are they.
Association with Pierre Guillaume is just that ---- an association. Are
we purveying guilt by association. I hope not.
May we hear more from Cohn and Chomsky? Or from those who present their
words?
Bernie Lieberman
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1993 16:56:00 EST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: re: Chomsky
[From: sheinfel%ssd.comm.mot.com@uic.edu (Aviad Sheinfeld)
[Subject: Re: Chomsky
[To: HOLOCAUS%UICVM.BITNET@uga.cc.uga.edu
[Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1993 16:10:09 -0500 (CDT)
>From the fingertips of BERNIE1%vms.cis.pitt.edu@uic.edu came forth:
>
> If I were defending an unpopular position I would read the words of
But I get the impression that Chomsky is _not_ defending an unpopular
position. He's only defending the right of someone to speak that
position.
> that position. I would criticize the position severely and if I thought
> it was despicable I would say so. But I would say that freedom of expression
> is my over-riding value and I defend people's right to say whatever they
> wish. But I would certainly know what I am defending.
What he's defending (allegedly) is freedom of speech, not the contents
of the speech... So there is no need to know what the position is.
> So as of now Werner Cohn's accusations stand. And anyone with political
> sophistication knows that accusations not answered are damming.
What? That's absurd. What if right here I accused Jimmy Carter of
spearheading the assassination of Sadat? Would that stand, and be
damning unless defended?!
> I am made very uneasy by the statement of Chomsky that he doesn't know
> what Faurisson has written.
It is precisely this statement that makes me feel better and more
comfortable with Chomsky's position. He's defending Faurisson's right
of speech objectively.
>
> Aare we all being terribly unfair to Professor Chomsky or is Werner Cohn
> correct?
I think we're being unfair... At least based on the evidence
presented thus far in this forum...
>
> Bernie Lieberman
>
Aviad Sheinfeld
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 23 Jul 1993 07:41:00 CST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: re: Chomsky
[Date: Fri, 23 Jul 93 1:16 +0300
[From: RWERMAN%vms.huji.ac.il@uic.edu
[To: Holocaust List
[Subject: RE: re: Chomsky
I have never read this popular new book of Mr. Adolf
Hitler, called _Mein Kampf_. It is possible that
there are some unpopular opinions expressed in that
book, which as I have said I have not read. But I,
Professor Robert Werman, defend Mr. Hitler's right
to express his findings.
Nonesense!!!! But that is exactly what Professor
Chomsky claims to have done.
__Bob Werman
rwerman@vms.huji.ac.il
Jerusalem
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 23 Jul 1993 07:49:00 CST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: re: Courageous Chomsky ???
[Date: Fri, 23 Jul 1993 12:45:50 +1000 (EST)
[From: Chris Lasdauskas
[Subject: Re: Courageous Chomsky???
[To: Holocaust List
> [Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1993 09:02 EST
> [From: BERNIE1%vms.cis.pitt.edu@uic.edu
> [Subject: Re: Courageous Chomsky???
> [To: HOLOCAUS%UICVM.BITNET@uga.cc.uga.edu
>
> I want to thank the person who posted the piece by Werner Cohn. It is
> certainly a service to me.
....
>
> LET US THANK COHN FOR HIS ANALYSIS BUT LET US NOT CONSIDER CHOMSKY
> GUILTY OF THE CRIMES COHN LISTS UNTIL WE HEAR HIS DEFENSE.
>
....
> Bernie Lieberman
I hope you don't mean what you said: that you will consider guilty
Chomsky after you hear his defence - regardless of its content.
Don't you Americans have a legal convention or Constitutional amendment to
the effect that not answering an allegation doesn't constitute admission
of guilt? If so will you remember this if you don't hear from Chomsky?
Incidentally, why does criticising the state of Israel constitute
neo-nazism / anti-semitism as implied in the Cohn piece? Does being Jewish
or non-anti-semitic preclude constructive criticism? There are plenty of
documented human rights abuses by Israel to criticise, I think it is only
right that Chomsky stands up for what he believes in.
Chris Lasdauskas
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 23 Jul 1993 21:39:00 CST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: U.S. and Liberation
[Subject: U.S. and liberation
[To: HOLOCAUS%UICVM.BITNET@uga.cc.uga.edu
[Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1993 19:13:23 -0400 (EDT)
[From: Michael Zvi Krumbein
Just a word on cheering on the U.S.:
Though I am one of those who feel that we could have done something more than
we did to stop the Holocaust (at least bomb the tracks when the Hungarian
Jews were being murdered), I would not fault the U.S. role in liberation.
Quite the contrary: the U.S. army saved countless lives when they came into
the camps. This is in contrast to other liberators.
mzk
(True, there may have been negative incidents in the American DP
administration. But we should give credit where it is due.)
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 23 Jul 1993 21:43:00 CST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: Chomsky
[From: "HANFTS%conrad.appstate.edu@uic.edu" 22-JUL-1993 23:20:11.25
[To: holocaus%uicvm.bitnet@vtvm2.cc.vt.edu
[CC:
[Subj: Chomsky
I think we are welll served by getting a clarification of Chomsky's views
because of his speciality. The questioners who asserted that we should
ignore Chomsky's views because he is a linguist and not a Holocaust
scholar misses the basis of Chomsky's popular support. In much of his
popular writings and lectures, like the one at my school, he asserts that
the American media are not free, but through subtle control of the education
system, the editorial boards and ownership, the American "power elite"
orchestrate an artifical consensus of news analysis and policy positions which
slant the news. Thus American public opinion is manipulated via the media
giants to the point that all small town editors and policy makes on local
newpapers, radio & t.v. stations, etc, look to the NY Times/Washington Post,
etc. for the "party line just as effectively as Tass looked to the Communist
Party line in Russia to interpret the news and world events.
For Chomsky this was clearly demonstrated during the Viet Nam war and the
massive media support of gov't policies on the war. Thus in the 1980's &
90's, he supports virtually all anti-establishment views including
condemnations of the Persian Gulf War, the Intefada and the rights of
Holocaust denialists. What is unclear to me is whether Chomsky's support
for these causes, which gives him unique popularity in a diverse range of
groups, is based on a pure distrust of the establishment (i.e. Israel is
suspectas it is a "friend"/lackey of the American power elite and the Intefada
is
good because it undermines the imperialism of an American serrogate) or
whether Jewish concerns--from the Holocaust to the Intefada & the Persian
Gulf wars--are given special condemnation because they involve Jews?
To many of us whom find Chomsky challenges to the contemporary "consensus,"
healthy and stimulating, I think we are justified in holding Dr. Chomsky
to the same standards and accountability which he submits those he
criticizes. For this reason we should encourage him to participate in our
discussion and clarify his position.
Sheldon Hanft
Appalachian State University
Boone, NC 28608 Hanfts@Appstate.edu
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 24 Jul 1993 11:40:00 CST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: ID cards
[From: "JOHNG%psy.gla.ac.uk@uic.edu" "Dr John Gillies" 23-JUL-1993
07:11:32.85
[To: holocaus@uicvm
[CC:
[Subj: ID Cards
I take Lucia Ruedenberg's and Kenneth Waltzer's point that it seems
to be only (or mainly) people who HAVEN'T visited the Washington
Holocaust Museum who are getting exercised about the question of ID
cards. As the person who started this discussion (I think), I have to
accept that it's always a weak position to appear to be critcising
something which you haven't actually experienced at first hand. Maybe
the issue does seem minor when viewed within the overall context of
the Museum and its exhibits - but I don't think it's necessarily a
"peripheral" question. It does seem to me to be important that we
think carefully about how (or whether) people's responses to the
Holocaust need to be orchestrated. The fact that the Museum appears
to have modified its practice on this matter suggests that it WAS
felt to be problematic. I agree with Lucia that the "sense of place"
must contribute powerfully to the impact of Auschwitz and other camp
museums and that no "ordinary" museum can compete with that. My
point was that there is something slightly "eerie" (to use another
contributor's term) about TRYING to "compete" in "making people feel
something" - which seemed to be what the ID cards were about.
I also agree with Lucia that survivor testimonies give the clearest
indication of the personal realities of the Holocaust - which is why
the people talking simply and quietly to camera in Claude Lanzmann's
"Shoah" make such a powerful impression, compared with a manipulative
dramatisation like the TV series "Holocaust".
Sorry to take up more space with this.
John Gillies
John Gillies
Department of Psychology
Adam Smith Building
University of Glasgow
Glasgow G12 8RT Tel: (0)41 339 8855 ext.5351
Scotland
johng@psy.glasgow.ac.uk
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 24 Jul 1993 11:44:00 CST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: Mein Kampf
[From: "BKELMSS%MUSIC.LOYNO.EDU@uic.edu" "BKELMSS" 23-JUL-1993 08:51:13.45
[To:
[CC:
[Subj: Mein Kampf
I disagree with an apparent implication of Bob Werman--that people
should NOT read Mein Kampf. If that book were to be suppressed or
banned, then I think we would all be in real trouble. Somewhere
recently--perhaps on this list--someone commented that MK is assigned in
Israeli schools.
Marcus Smith
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 24 Jul 1993 11:53:00 CST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: Comparing genocides [forwarded from History]
[Date: Fri, 23 Jul 1993 14:07:20 EDT
[Reply-To: History Discussion Forum
[Sender: History Discussion Forum
[From: J Sullivan
[Subject: Re: comparing genocides
[Comments: To: history@rutvm1.rutgers.edu
[To: Multiple recipients of list HISTORY
See also "Voyage of the Damned." Can't recall the author at the moment.
It deals with the odyssey of a shipload of Jewish refugees from France
who were refused entry into the US, Cuba, and assorted British West Indian
islands. They eventually were forced to return to Europe where the majority
ended up in concentration camps. It makes for sad reading.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 26 Jul 1993 10:18:00 EST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: No More on ID Cards
[Date: Sat, 24 Jul 93 17:09 EDT
[To: HOLOCAUS%UICVM.BITNET@uga.cc.uga.edu
[From: "Kenneth.Waltzer" <21409MGR%msu.edu@uic.edu>
[Subject: No More on ID Cards
Has anyone on the network compiled or can anyone point me to a developed
list of video and film materials on the Holocaust? I have recently seen the
list from the National Center for Jewish Film at Brandeis, which is very good;
but it's narrow - I'm interested in building a list of materials that would
cover the following categories. Appreciate help and suggestions.
1. Jewish Life in W. and E. Europe Before WWII
2. Rise of Nazism to Power/Third Reich
3. Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy/Final Solution
4. European Jewish Life and/or Resistance Under Nazis
5. Rescue Efforts; Allied Nations and the Holocaust
6. Liberation and PostWar
7. Survivors on the Holocaust
8. Feature Films on Holocaust Themes
Kenneth.Waltzer 21409MGR@MSU.EDU
James Madison College
Michigan State U.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 26 Jul 1993 10:22:00 EST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: Mein Kampf
[Date: Sat, 24 Jul 1993 21:52:21 +0300 (IDT)
[From: Natan Galkowicz
[Subject: Re: Mein Kampf
[To: Holocaust List
> [From: "BKELMSS%MUSIC.LOYNO.EDU@uic.edu" "BKELMSS" 23-JUL-1993 08:51:13.
45
> [To:
> [CC:
> [Subj: Mein Kampf
>
> I disagree with an apparent implication of Bob Werman--that people
> should NOT read Mein Kampf. If that book were to be suppressed or
> banned, then I think we would all be in real trouble. Somewhere
> recently--perhaps on this list--someone commented that MK is assigned in
> Israeli schools.
> Marcus Smith
If there is interest , I could check if MK is really assigned to ANY
Israeli schools, and who decided ...
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Natan Galkowicz Israeli Postmaster - High and Middle Schools
E-mail : jewishnt@bgumail.bgu.ac.il Tel Aviv - Israel
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 26 Jul 1993 11:54:00 EST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: Kenneth Waltzer inquiry re films
[Date: Mon, 26 Jul 93 10:49 CDT
[From: George M. Kren
[Subject: Kenneth Waltzer inquiry re films
[To:
There is a now outdated but still useful bibliography published by the
international Center for Holocaust Studies Anti Defmation League of
B'nai B'rith 823 United Nations Plaza NY NY October 017
The Holocaust in Books and Fillms: A selected, Annotated List, published by
Hippocrene Books and published by Center for Holocaust Studies (at above
address, att: Dennis Klein) The Holocaust: Catalog of Publications and Audio
1
Visual Materials3~ (ca 1990)
s.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 26 Jul 1993 12:23:00 EST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: Re: Holocaust Museum = too negative/ fascist even?
[Date: Sun, 25 Jul 93 12:20:32 EDT
[From: lin collette
[Subject: Re: Re: Holocaust Museum = too negative/ fascist even?
[To: Holocaust List
As a first -generation daughter of a German war bride, and as a half-German Am-
erican who suffers no trauma from being continually reminded of the Holocaust
(since I have relatives who were involved in the Allied 'discovery' [in quotes
because, like Deborah Lipstadt, I find it hard to believe that the Allies only
discovered the death camps during the Occupation and at Liberation]), I should
add that I also resent the implication on the part of many that most, if not
all Germans supported the Third Reich and its policies, and that we're happily
donating money to the Institute for Historical Review, a nice little outfit
likes to claim the Jews made up the Holocaust. It is my personal belief that
in times of war, most people could care less about government policy as long as
they're able to get food and to survive. From what I can gather from talking
with my German relatives, that was their overriding concern. Of course, some
people will say that that's what my relatives say NOW, and of course they were
Nazi supporters. However, I've said this before and I'll say it again--no good
comes from continually blaming an entire people for the excesses of their gov-
ernment. Because I disagree with Israel's policies concerning the Palestinians
does that mean I blame the entire population of Israel? Or because I disagree
with any other country's policies (including my own) does that mean I fault the
entire nation? Of course not. Anger concerning the Holocaust should be
directed at those responsible for the outrages committed and the policymakers
who refused to allow refugees to enter their countries.
lin collette
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 26 Jul 1993 14:28:00 EST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: Re: No More on ID Cards
[Date: Mon, 26 Jul 1993 14:53 EDT
[From: FISHMAN%SNYFARVA.BITNET@uic.edu
[Subject: Re: No More on ID Cards
[To: HOLOCAUS%UICVM.BITNET@uchimvs1.uchicago.edu
Kenneth,
The Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles should have the list you're
seeking, and there are various Holocaust Resource Centers that may also have an
appropriate film bibliography--Queensborough comes to mind, as do the Center for
Holocaust Studies/Documentation & Research in Brooklyn, the Holocaust Resource
Center in at Keene State College (New Hampshire), and the Holocaust Resource and
Education Center of Central Florida.
The Holocaust Memorial Foundation of Illinois has a "Film Bank,"
B'nai B'rith's International Center for Holocaust Studies (Manhattan) has an
annotated list of "The Holocaust in Books and Films," and the YIVO Institute for
Jewish Research (Manhattan) has a film library.
Hope this helps.
***************
Charles Fishman
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 26 Jul 1993 15:22:00 EST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: films
[To: holocaus@uicvm
[From: Dr John Gillies
[Date: 26 Jul 93 20:39:03 GMT,BST
[Subject: Films
Kenneth:
If you don't already know the book, Annette Insdorf's "Indelible
Shadows: Film and the Holocaust" published by Cambridge University
Press (2nd edition - 1990) discusses around 70 or so fictional and
documentary films concerning the Holocaust.
Annete Insdorf is at the Department of Film, Columbia University.
John
John Gillies
Department of Psychology
Adam Smith Building
University of Glasgow
Glasgow G12 8RT Tel: (0)41 339 8855 ext.5351
Scotland
johng@psy.glasgow.ac.uk
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 26 Jul 1993 15:23:00 EST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: films
[Date: Mon, 26 Jul 93 14:55:32 CDT
[From: Jerry Rosenberg
[Subject: films
[To: Holocaust Discussion List <>
I have a fairly extensive film documentary library but not all are in
the office I am currently in. I will post a list per category tomorrow.
For beginners, list 2, THE HITLER TAPES; HITLER, THE WHOLE STORY, HITLER,
THE SEDUCTION OF A PEOPLE, THE TWISTED CROSS, THE RISE AND FALL OF NAZI
GERMANY. For list 1, PRECIOUS LEGACY, list 3, THE WANNSEE CONFERENCE,
WITNESS TO THE HOLOCAUST, list 4, RESTLESS CONSCIENCE-NAZI RESISTANCE,
list 6, JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG, MEMORIES OF THE CAMPS, PAINFULL REMINDER-
I will need to check my master list to cover the remaining areas and to
add to the ones already started.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1993 11:14:00 EST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: RE: too negative/facist even??
[Date: Mon, 26 Jul 93 13:31:00 PDT
[From: Michael Robin
[To: HOLOCAUS%UICVM.BITNET@uchimvs1.uchicago.edu
[Subject: RE: too negative/facist even??
Lin Colette wrote (in part):
>I also resent the implication on the part of many that most, if not
all
>Germans supported the Third Reich and its policies, and that we're
>happily donating money to the Institute for Historical Review, a
nice
>little outfit likes to claim the Jews made up the Holocaust. It is
my
>personal belief that in times of war, most people could care less
about
>government policy as long as they're able to get food and to
survive.
>From what I can gather from talking with my German relatives, that
>was their overriding concern. Of course, some people will say that
>that's what my relatives say NOW, and of course they were Nazi
>supporters.
>However, I've said this before and I'll say it again--no
>good comes from continually blaming an entire people for the
>excesses of their gov- ernment. Because I disagree with Israel's
>policies concerning the Palestinians does that mean I blame the
>entire population of Israel? Or because I disagree with any other
>country's policies (including my own) does that mean I fault the
>entire nation? Of course not. Anger concerning the Holocaust
>should be directed at those responsible for the outrages committed
>and the policymakers who refused to allow refugees to enter their
>countries.
As a Jew, as an American, and humanitarian I agree with Lin.
You can not blame an entire population for what its government
does. Particularly a non-democratic government.
Did all of the US people on this list support the fire bombings over
Japan or TWO atomic bombs? Did you support the civilian bombings in
Vietman or Iraq?? Or US support for genocidal policies in Guatemala??
Get real. Yes, I am sure there are some Germans (as well as others
around the world) that supported the breadth of Nazi policies, as
well as those who disagreed... and most likely all points inbetween.
We can see that most Euro-American nations are unclear how to resolve
feeling about history -- be they German, French, etc. We need to help
educate everyone, which includes offering what supuport we can so
that all states, all peoples acknowledge what happened (rather than
deny it) and learn from history.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1993 16:12:00 EST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: RE: too negative/facist even??
[From: holo%kg6kf.ampr.org@uicvm.uic.edu (Holocaust Center--San Francisco)
[Subject: RE: too negative/facist even??
[To: uga.cc.uga.edu!HOLOCAUS%UICVM.BITNET@cs.sfsu.edu
[Date: Tue, 27 Jul 93 11:24:42 PDT
Give me one instance of German population manifestation of disagreeing with
the measures taken against Jews during the Third Reich?
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1993 16:16:00 EST
Reply-To: Holocaust List
Sender: Holocaust List
From: JIMMOTT@spss.com
Subject: Dialogue
[Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1993 03:20:47 -0500 (EST)
[From: RUEDNBRG%NYUACF.BITNET@uic.edu
[Subject: dialogue
[To: holocaus%uicvm.BITNET@uchimvs1.uchicago.edu
I would very much like to see a different kind of dialogue and interaction
form on this list. I don't know if it's possible, or appropriate here, but
obviously there are people who read and post to this discussion who come from
diverse backgrounds, affected by and interested in the topic of this list for
diverse reasons. I, for one, am interested in this diversity - but I am
disturbed the defensive, aggressive posturing - what's the point? We have a
shared history, some of us experienced it, others of us inherit it. Do we
really need to beat each other over head with who is victim of what ??
[Date: Sun, 25 Jul 93 12:20:32 EDT
[From: lin collette wrote:
>add that I also resent the implication on the part of many that most, if not
>all Germans supported the Third Reich and its policies, and that we're happily
>donating money to the Institute for Historical Review,
who are you talking to? The only person who has brought up these issues
was Cecelia...
>From what I can gather from talking
>with my German relatives, that was their overriding concern. Of course, some
>people will say...
Who are you talking to?
>However, I've said this before and I'll say it again--no good
>comes from continually blaming an entire people for the excesses of their gov-
>ernment.
who are you talking to ?
>Anger concerning the Holocaust should be directed at those responsible
who are you talking to?
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Lucia Ruedenberg
New York University
Dept. of Performance Studies
Email: ruednbrg@ACFcluster.NYU.EDU
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1993 16:59:00 EST
Reply-To: Holocaust List